“Yes. To the Army.”
“Will?” Mother’s voice drifted through the front door.
“Yeah?”
“Come on in. Breakfast is ready, and the kids are getting up. You seen Gate?”
“Yeah. He’s here.”
“Tell him to come on in. We don’t have much time.”
Daddy grinned and reached out and messed up my hair. “Go get some clothes on,” he said. I’d been standing there in my drawers.
They were all around the table, pouring Post Toasties into their bowls, when I got there. Rick and Belinda were still yawning and rubbing at their eyes.
“I wanted to fix you a good breakfast this morning,” Mother said, “but we got up so late, and you don’t have much time.”
“This is okay,” Daddy said.
We ate quietly and fast. When he had finished his cereal, Daddy took out his watch and looked at it. “I ought to have time for another cup of coffee before Jim Bob gets here,” he said.
“I could have taken you in,” Mother said. “The mail truck won’t leave Darlington for two hours. You’ll just have to sit around and wait.” She poured his coffee.
“Well, Jim Bob was going in anyway, and there’s no use wasting gas.” He rolled a cigarette and lit it and slouched back in his chair and looked at us all, one by one. “You kids behave yourselves while I’m gone,” he said. “Don’t give your ma a hard time.”
“We won’t, Daddy,” Belinda said solemnly. Rick shook his head.
Daddy grinned and blew a cloud of blue smoke toward the ceiling. “Make sure you remember that,” he said. He finished his coffee and put out his cigarette in the bottom of the cup. “Well, I’d better hit the road.” He got up. Mother looked kind of funny, kind of small and scared and sad, and Daddy put his arm around her and said, “Don’t worry, Lacy. I’ll get a leave pretty soon.” He kissed her on the cheek and then walked around the table and kissed us all on the cheek, then walked into the living room. We all followed.
Our old brown leather suitcase was standing by the front door. Daddy picked it up and started to leave. Then he turned and put the suitcase down and kissed all us kids on the cheek again and gave Mother a long kiss right on the mouth. It made me feel uncomfortable, like I was seeing something I wasn’t supposed to.
“Goodbye, Lacy.”
“Goodbye, Will. Take good care of yourself.”
“I will. You, too. Goodbye, kids.” He picked up the suitcase again and opened the screen door, and then just stood there holding it open and looking at us. “Come along to the road with me, Gate,” he said.
When we passed by the tractor shed, he stopped and took a long look at the old Farmall sitting there, the big toothlike lugs on its iron wheels glowing in the shadow. Then he turned and looked toward the house. Mother and the kids were out by the fence, and I could tell that Mother was crying. They all waved, and Daddy waved back, then we started down the lane again. “I ain’t going to look back no more,” he said. We walked along quietly and slowly, and Daddy looked at everything as we went by, as if it was all new to him and he was trying to find out what it was all about. He looked real good, dressed up like that.
“Are you going to stay gone a long time?” I asked.
“Maybe. Maybe not. Nobody knows for sure.”
“Where are you going? I mean, where is the Army?”
“North of here a-ways.”
“Will you send me a Jap knife, when you get a chance?”
He laughed. “Yeah, if I get a chance. It’ll be a while, though, so don’t go running to the mailbox every day.”
The lane stretched clean before us. The sunflowers couldn’t have been yellower and the sky couldn’t have been bluer, and Daddy looked at it all. “Pretty day,” he said. “Don’t remember a prettier one. I wish it was raining.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I guess it would be a little easier to leave if it was raining. Maybe not, though.”
We sat down by the mailbox, but we weren’t there long before we saw Jim Bob’s old blue pickup coming down the road. We stood up, and Jim Bob stopped.
“Ready, Will?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.”
Daddy threw his suitcase into the back and opened the door. He had one foot on the running board and was about to climb in when he turned and looked at me.
“Today’s your birthday, ain’t it?”
“Yeah.”
He stuck his hand into his pocket and pulled out his old bone-handled pocket knife and grabbed my hand and put the knife in it. He kind of grinned and messed up my hair again. “It ain’t a Jap knife, son,” he said, “but happy birthday.” He climbed in, and Jim Bob slammed the pickup into gear and took off. I watched until they disappeared over the hill.
When Harley and Ellen came to get Nero and Old Blue was when I really knew we were moving. Harley stepped out of the pickup and hollered to the house.
“We’re here to get them, Lacy,” he said, and Mother just waved at him through the screen, and he walked to the barn and saddled Old Blue and rode him back to the house. Then Ellen opened the pickup door and tried to whistle Nero in with her. Nero just stood there wagging her tail, looking at Ellen, then looking at Harley up on Daddy’s horse. We were all standing at the living room window, staring out, and I asked Mother if I could go say goodbye to Nero.
“No,” she said, “because then she wouldn’t go, and things are hard enough without that. Just keep still.”
Harley and Ellen kept trying to talk Nero into jumping in with Ellen, but she wouldn’t, so finally Harley climbed down and picked her up and threw her into the pickup and slammed the door. Nero yelped and jumped against the window, but Ellen threw the pickup into gear and took off down the lane. Harley mounted and followed her at a lope.
The next day, Bill Allison came with his truck and his two boys and hauled our stuff to the little white frame house on the hill by the schoolhouse in Darlington, where Gran lived. A greasy sharecropper named Shipp and his ugly wife and about fifteen kids moved into our farm like a band of Comanches. Mother and I walked around the place with Shipp, and Mother showed him where things were and told him what to do. “They’re white trash,” she said as we drove back to town, “but they’re all we could get.”
Then school started and I was in the second grade. My new room was next to my old one, but I didn’t like it as much, and I didn’t like my new teacher. Her name was Mrs. Potter, and her hair was always messed up and she smelled like cooking cabbage and had a mustache. Sometimes during recess I would go back to my old room and talk to Mrs. Brim, and she would try to get me to like Mrs. Potter, but I never did.
All I had to do in the morning was walk out the back door and across a little pasture and crawl through a barbed-wire fence and I was on the school ground. Sometimes I’d go over there on Saturdays, too, and play around on the slide and swings, but it wasn’t much fun.
Gran took me to church every Sunday. Sometimes she would take Belinda, too, but she always took me. It was time I learned about Jesus and all he did for me, she said.
“Hurry up, Gate. Your Sunday clothes are on the chair in the living room. Drink your milk.”
“Can I have some coffee milk, Mother?”
“Drink it down some first. There’s not room for coffee in that glass.”
I closed my eyes and drank it down about an inch. It stuck to the inside of my mouth. Mother filled up the glass with coffee, and I reached for the sugar bowl.
“One spoonful,” Mother said. “Unless you’ve got a pocketful of sugar stamps on you. Where’s Rick?”
“On the pot,” Belinda said. “He’s always on the pot.”
“Ricky!”
“Huh?”
“Get up and eat.”
“Okay. Through.” He staggered in, pulling up his drawers, and sat next to Belinda.
“Oh, Rick!” Mother said. “Why didn’t you wait until I wiped you? Damn it. Come on, Gate. I’ve got to get you ready. Bring
your coffee with you.”
I put on my Sunday shirt and sat down to button it. “Your fingernails are filthy,” Mother said. She took her toothpick out of her mouth and started digging with it.
“Ouch!”
“Hush. You want to go to Sunday School looking like Filthy McNasty?” She spit on her hand, wet my cowlick and combed my hair. Then I stepped into my blue Sunday pants and Mother hooked up my elastic suspenders and the elastic band of my tie. “There,” she said finally. “Now you look like a gentleman.”
The downtown street was deserted, except for a few cars headed toward the same place Gran and I were going. The drugstore, Thompson’s Texaco, the Helpy-Selfy Laundry, Pearly White’s blacksmith shop all were locked with big padlocks. The Johnson grass in the cracks of the concrete floor of the old burned-out bank building had turned brown, and shivered slightly in the cool breeze. We played marbles around chalk-drawn circles there in the spring, but I knew all those circles had been washed away by now.
Gran parked in the big gravel square in front of the big white frame Baptist Church. The square was always full of cars on Sunday, because all three of Darlington’s churches were there—the Baptist on the west, the Methodist on the north, the smaller Camp-bellite church on the south. On the east was the tabernacle where all three took turns holding revivals in the summer.
“Have you got collection money?”
I shook my head, and Gran dug in her purse and handed me a penny. “Now, give it to Mrs. Arnett when she asks for it,” she said, “and don’t lose it.”
We were late, and the Primary Class was almost through singing when I got there.
I’ve got that Bap-tist boos-ter spi-zer-inc-tum
Down in my heart,
Down in my heart,
Down in my heart!
I’ve got that Bap-tist boos-ter spi-zer-inc-tum
Down in my heart,
Down in my heart to stay!
It was the song we always sang during the revival, when the Primary Class became the Baptist Booster Band and we banged sticks together, clanged cymbals, and hit triangles with ten-penny nails.
Mrs. Arnett’s rump was bothering her again. She had a little inner tube that she brought to Sunday School to sit on when her rump was bothering her, and she was sitting on it today. She told us the story about Moses and the bullrushes. The girls always loved that one, but the boys liked David and Goliath and the one about the man who killed all those guys with the jawbone of a jackass. After the story, Mary Jean Haskell passed the basket around for us to put our pennies in. She got to do this because her daddy was the preacher. Then we colored until the bell rang. I colored a picture of Noah letting a bird go while all the animals watched. I colored the bird blue.
“Oh, Gate, you never color right,” Mary Jane said. “Doves are white.”
“I haven’t got a white Crayola. Blue’s better, anyway.”
“And Noah’s face isn’t black. It’s white, too. He wasn’t a nigger.”
“I told you once, I haven’t got white!”
“You can’t even stay inside the lines!”
“Leave me alone!” I was getting pretty riled, and Mrs. Arnett got off of her inner tube to come over and shush me, but the bell rang, and she had to go stand by the door and hand us a picture when we went out. Mine showed Jesus talking to a man up in a tree.
“It’s got a story on the back, Gatewood,” Mrs. Arnett said. “Get your grandmother to read it to you.”
“I’ll read it my own self.”
“My, you must be a smart boy.” Mrs. Arnett smiled and patted my head, then shoved me out of the door.
I found Gran in the auditorium and sat down by her. Brother Haskell came in, and we had some songs and some prayers, then they took up another collection. This time, Gran gave me a nickel to drop into the plate. Then Mr. and Mrs. Tyler came in and sat down by me. They always came in after the collection. Mr. Tyler was big and round and wore a wide belt with curlicues on it and a big shiny buckle. The belt squeaked like a saddle when he breathed, and I watched the buckle move up and down while Brother Haskell talked. Gran nudged me. She pointed at Brother Haskell. He was red in the face, and he was yelling about a collie dog he used to have that got caught in a house fire, and how that dog yelped and hollered, and how his hair and flesh smelled while he was burning up, and how that was just what hell was going to be like for those who were going. And I started thinking about Nero, and how I’d feel if she got caught in a fire like that and I couldn’t get her out.
Finally, he slowed down enough to tell us we were going to sing a song, and he came down and stood in front of the pulpit, and everybody sang.
“Al-most per-suad-ed,” now to be-lieve;
“Al-most per-suad-ed,” Christ to re-ceive;
Seems now some soul to say,
“Go, Spir-it, go Thy way,
Some more con-ven-ient day
On Thee I’ll call.”
A couple of high school girls came down the aisle crying. Brother Haskell whispered in their ears, shook their hands, and waved them toward the front pew. Then he started shouting again, shaking his fist, his oily black curls dancing over his eyes.
“How do you know the sun’s going to come up tomorrow?” he yelled above the music. “How do you know you won’t depart this world tonight while you’re asleep and go to your grave with your sins still strangling your soul? Do you want to burn like my collie dog forever and ever?”
Gran was crying. Tears were dripping off her chin. She took off her glasses and wiped her eyes with her handkerchief.
“Al-most per-suad-ed,” harvest is past!
“Al-most per-suad-ed,” doom comes at last!
“Al-most” can-not a-vail;
“Al-most” is but to fail!
Sad, sad, that bit-ter wail,
“Al-most,” but lost.
That was the end of the song, but Brother Haskell wasn’t through yet.
“All right, brothers and sisters,” he said. “All right! I know the Spirit is working in some of your hearts today. There’s still time! There’s still a chance to get through the gates of heaven before they slam shut! I want every head bowed! Every eye closed! If your husband, your son, your mother is lost, pray for God to send the light! If you’re a sinking sinner, throw your life into the Everlasting Arms right now!”
We bowed our heads, and I gnawed on a corner of my Jesus picture.
“Almighty God, who canst read our evil hearts like an open book, we know the day is coming soon when we will stand before thy judgment bar…”
Brother Haskell prayed a long time, but nobody else was saved, so he finally told everybody to come down and shake hands with the two high school girls. People started moving into the aisles, and Gran put her wet handkerchief into her purse.
“How did you like the service today, Gate?”
“Fine.”
“Well, you were a good boy. Now, go wait for me in the car while I go down and extend these girls the right hand of Christian fellowship.”
As we rode toward home, Gran waved at people getting out of their cars in front of their houses and hummed a song.
“Gran,” I said.
“Hmmm?”
“Can I stop going to church again when Daddy gets home?”
She looked at me kind of funny. “Don’t you want to go to heaven?” she asked.
“Yeah, I guess. But do you have to go to church to do that?”
“Yessirreebobtail,” she said.
“I guess Daddy won’t be going then, huh?”
“I don’t want to stand in judgment of anybody, but I’ll be mighty surprised if I see him there.”
Everybody was supposed to take a nap on Sunday afternoon at Gran’s house, and everybody did except me. I never could sleep in the daytime, so I’d usually just lie on my bed and look at my books until everybody else went to sleep, then I’d go outside.
As I stepped out the door, Alice Childers was walking across the road from her house, whic
h was next door to the Haskells’.
“Come over and play,” she said.
“I can’t. I’m taking a nap.”
“You ain’t.”
“Well, I’m supposed to be. I’m not supposed to leave the yard anyway.”
“A little while won’t hurt.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know. Let’s go watch Mary Jean’s toilet.”
The Haskells had a new house, which Brother Haskell built himself when he wasn’t preaching. It had the only flush toilet in Darlington. It was white, and when you pushed a handle, water ran through it and gurgled, and all the shit disappeared.
“You think Brother Haskell will let us watch it?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s taking a nap, too.”
Mary Jean and Alice were both third-graders. I never played with Mary Jean because I didn’t like her. She thought that because she was older than I was, she could boss me around all the time. But Alice never let on that she was older than me, and I liked her a lot. I would go to Mary Jean’s when Alice was with me.
We knocked at the front door. No answer. We knocked again. No answer.
“Let’s go around back,” Alice said.
No answer there, either. The car shed door was open, and the car was gone.
“Maybe they’re eating with somebody,” I said. “Let’s see what’s in the car shed.”
It was shady and warm inside. There was a workbench with a bunch of tools in one corner and a big pile of straw in the other. I could smell the spot of oil on the ground. An old tire was hanging on the wall.
“Let’s shut the door,” Alice said.
“What for?”
“Just to see what it’s like.”
“It’ll be dark.”
“Scared?”
“No.”
“Then shut the door.”
I swung the two big doors shut. There was a window over the workbench. I could see the sunlight through some nail holes in the shingles, too. Alice sat down in the straw. She looked like a fat teddy bear with bangs.
“See, I knew it wouldn’t be dark,” she said.
“Well, what’ll we do now?”
“Let’s fuck.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ll show you.”
Some Sweet Day Page 5