by Shutta Crum
Doyle hadn’t even signed those papers to get Baby into Head Start. But the most amazing thing was that Beryl Ann had gotten mad. I just couldn’t picture that at all, not at all!
By the time I got to Hiram it was already 2:30. I went straight to the hardware store. Adam was working on a display of hand tools. “Well?” I asked.
“Well?”
“You know. The drawing’s at three o’clock. Are you gonna go and watch?”
“Hmm.” He smiled and shook his head. “We’re pretty busy right now. I’m not sure I can make it.”
I looked around the store. There wasn’t a soul in sight. “C’mon, Adam, quit teasing! We’ve got at least two chances to win. I’m going over to watch even if you aren’t.”
“Hold your horses. Let me finish this and tell my uncle where I’m going.” He stacked one last pair of pliers on the shelf and came out from behind the counter. “The drawing’s not until three, and it must be—oh, let me see—at least a two-minute walk across the street to the bank. Can’t start out too early, I guess.”
I rolled my eyes. “I just want to get a good seat, that’s all. But take your time.” I pretended to yawn, and poked around in a box full of red hose spigots.
Adam finally headed for the door. “You never know when you might need a good spigot,” he said with a laugh.
He took such long steps that I had to run to catch up to him as he crossed the street. He was whistling while we walked down two doors to the First Farmers and Tenants Bank.
“Adam, if you had a choice, would you rather have no father at all or one that wasn’t any good?” I asked him.
Adam stopped by the door of the bank. “That’s a hard question, Jessie.” He looked away a minute, thinking.
“Let’s see . . . I guess it would depend on a lot of things,” he said. “For instance, what’s the rest of the family like? I mean, if the rest of a family—the mother, brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles, and others—are really loving, they can help fill up an empty place in someone’s heart or heal a hurt caused by a no-account parent. But it also depends upon how bad this parent is. If they’re just lazy or shiftless, that’s one thing. But if they’re mean or really bad, that’s a whole other can of worms, so to speak.”
I could tell Adam was watching someone behind me as he talked, so I turned and looked around. Dickie’s daddy was up by the Hiram Feed & Seed. “Take him, for instance,” said Adam, nodding in Mr. Whitten’s direction. “Now, Curtis Whitten is one man I wouldn’t wish on any poor child as a father.”
I watched Mr. Whitten rear back and spit a spray of brown tobacco juice out of the side of his mouth and onto the granite stone below the Feed & Seed window as he pushed open the door. He hadn’t even tried to aim for the dented spittoon that sat there.
Mr. Whitten was known to have a really mean streak in him. He had even lit into Preacher Beaumont one day outside the church. Everyone thought it was going to come to a fistfight, but they’d dragged Mr. Whitten away.
The talk around town was that Dickie’s daddy was a snake handler and attended a Church with Signs, a “handler’s church,” up on the mountainside, talking and dancing with poisonous snakes. Snake handling wasn’t exactly legal, but some folks did it anyway, even some otherwise pretty nice and ordinary folks. But others here in town said it was dangerous and stupid. It was kind of like making ‘shine. Some people did that, too. In fact, there was a rumor that Mr. Whitten ran a moonshine still up behind his place.
So folks weren’t supposed to know about the snake handlers. But almost everyone knew that Mr. Whitten, and others from over by Bartlettsville, worshiped by the taking up of serpents. Dickie had even bragged at school as how his daddy kept a pet diamondback named Ol’ One Eye, and how he was going to let Dickie handle him soon. But none of us believed him. Dickie was always full of big talk.
Every so often we would hear that the sheriff had made a run up the back of Martin’s Mountain in the middle of the night to break up a handler gathering. But it never stopped for long. Pretty soon there’d be talk of the handlers getting together again.
It had never occurred to me to think about what kind of father Dickie had, or to wonder whether Mr. Whitten was crazy or just plain mean, like Dickie.
Adam was already stepping through the First Farmers door. Inside, the bank looked about the same as it always does, one or two people in line. A couple of the women who worked there started talking to Adam. He always seemed to gather a group of women wherever he went. I think most of the single women around here were glad when he came back from Michigan to help his uncle with the hardware store. I sat down on one of the wooden benches by the door to wait.
By the time of the drawing, a crowd of almost twenty was milling about, including DeeDee Byrum, her mama, and her daddy, the banker. Mr. Salyer, Missy’s daddy, was the president of the Rotary, so he was going to be the one to pull the slips from the box. But first he gave a little speech about supporting local business and how this was the tenth year for the Hiram raffle and how it raised money for the community.
Adam and I stood together watching as he reached in for the name of the third-prize winner. Third prize was a free permanent wave at Debbie’s Dos, a new beauty parlor in town. That went to Mrs. Daniels, who giggled as she stepped forward.
Then Mr. Salyer reached in to get the name for the second prize, the one I wanted: a gift certificate to the Roadside Grill. I crossed my fingers. I closed my eyes. I repeated over and over to myself, “Please let it be Adam’s slip. Please let it be . . .”
No such luck. Second prize went to DeeDee’s mother, Mrs. Byrum. She laughed and shook everybody’s hand as she went up for her gift certificate. I glowered at DeeDee. What the heck did they need that for? Mr. and Mrs. Byrum were rich and could go to the Roadside Grill whenever they felt like it.
I wanted to leave right then. I tugged at Adam’s shirt and nodded toward the door. He reached out, took my hand, squeezed it, and shook his head. So we stayed for the whole thing.
First prize was a choice of $20 worth of auto parts from one of Mr. Salyer’s auto dealerships. Mr. Salyer drew the slip and announced that first prize went to Mr. Buggs, the church organist in Baylor, which wasn’t going to do him any good because he didn’t own a car. But judging by the number of chins his face creased into, he seemed pleased.
“Let’s go,” I whispered to Adam. This whole thing was pitiful. I wished I hadn’t wasted fifty cents by entering.
But then Mr. Salyer held up his hands to quiet the crowd and announced that they were going to draw for a consolation prize. I wondered what that was going to be when suddenly Adam let go of my hand and stepped forward. Mr. Salyer must have called his name, though I didn’t hear him do it. I held my breath while Adam thanked everybody and came back to stand beside me. Then Mr. Salyer made a short thank-you speech and folks began to leave.
“What’d we win?” I asked.
“Let’s see,” said Adam, reading the fancy certificate. “It says, ‘Redeemable for five dollars’ worth of supplies at the Hiram Feed and Seed Store.’”
“Feed and Seed! What good is that? I’m not a farmer, and neither are you. Some consolation.” I turned and stomped out the door, not waiting for Adam.
thirteen
I RODE MY BIKE to the Ketchums’. I had to find out if Robert had gotten into trouble for going to the Howling Kitty. And I had to give him the bad news about the raffle. It just seemed like nothing was going right lately. Certainly, neither of our mamas was going to get a night out.
At the Ketchums’ I got off my bike and wound my way past the hubcaps to the porch steps. Nobody was out in the yard, and I didn’t see Doyle’s truck. It was probably still at the Howling Kitty. I leaned my bike against the house and started up the steps.
I could see through the wood-framed screen door to the front room, where Robert was sitting in a chair.
I was going to call out, but something held me back. Maybe it was the way he sat in the chair. Maybe it was the
stillness of the place . . . Maybe it was the hand I saw reaching out to clasp Robert’s like it was hanging on for dear life.
I couldn’t move. I stood there watching Robert sit with his head down, holding his father’s hand. How could he? Then I turned and slipped quietly back down the steps.
I’d rarely seen Doyle do anything but sleep, curse, and occasionally play with Baby. It seemed like Doyle hardly even knew he had an older son. Robert and I, we were . . . well, it had always been kind of like we were the same—that neither one of us had a father.
Now Doyle had gone and messed things up good.
I grabbed my bike and rode down the road to Lester’s house. A funny tight feeling was growing in my chest. It had been a long, long day.
“Lester!” I yelled. I pushed open the back door and walked in without waiting to be invited.
Lester was sitting in his favorite reclining chair by the big front window where he could see his bird feeders. He smiled when he saw me and said, “Little one!” And then he took a good look up and down at me, and opened up his arms.
I climbed up onto the arm of his chair and sat with my cheek against the top of his head. We watched the few birds that stopped by and didn’t talk for a long time. It felt good.
Finally, I leaned back and looked at his wrinkled cheeks and his white hair, which still curled over his ears. “So, how’re you feeling?” I asked. “Mama says I’m not to pester you. She said that more than once.”
He shook his head and laughed. “You never pester me, little one.”
Lester’s called me “little one” for as far back as I can remember. And even though I’m hardly little anymore and can barely fit in his chair with him now, that’s still OK by me.
“I’m doing a mite better today,” he said. “Just a bad bout with the ol’ rheumatiz. Doc says to sit in the sunshine and pray that it stays dry for a spell. Anyhow, I’m much better now that you’re here.” He looked at me all serious-like. “While I seem to be getting handsomer every day, you look like something the cat drug in.”
“Yeah. I know. It’s been a bad day; a whole bad week, Lester.”
I gulped down that tight feeling in my throat and chest and told him all about it. He listened, nodding every so often and exclaiming, “My my!” when I got to the part about the Howling Kitty bar. I told him about Doyle drinking a lot lately and not helping Baby get into the Head Start school, about Robert not getting new glasses, about Grandma getting divorced again, and even about fighting with Dickie. I told him about everything except the letter to Dr. Harrison. For some reason, I didn’t want to talk about that. That was my personal secret. And I didn’t say anything about what I’d just seen at Robert’s.
“Hmm, hmm, hmm,” Lester sighed. “That Doyle, if he keeps up his drinking, he’s either going to kill himself or someone else one of these days. I remember when he was just a dirt-streaked kid and he played with my grandson, Jack. They were about the same age. Lord, how his daddy used to beat him. Sometimes we’d see Old Man Ketchum going up the road with a switch, taking off through the woods after young Doyle.” Lester shook his head. “The funny thing is, his old man was a temperance man. Didn’t have no truck with the bottle at all. And now his son’s living in one. Old Man Ketchum wasn’t worth two cents in my opinion—no kind of father. Well, the Good Book says, ‘Ye reap what ye sow.’ And to my way of thinking, just because a man plants a seed in the ground, it doesn’t make him a farmer. He’s got to tend the crop, too. That’s the most important part.”
We watched the birds for a few minutes, and then Lester continued, “The thing is, I think down deep Doyle’s not so bad if he could stay off the bottle. The best thing Doyle ever did with his life was to marry Beryl Ann.”
I got twitchy listening to Lester talk about Doyle, and I didn’t want to think about the way Doyle had been holding onto Robert so tight. I climbed down from Lester’s chair and made my usual rounds of his living room. I liked touching his things, his pictures in their old frames, and his pipes that he doesn’t smoke anymore. I’ve always touched them lightly, with just the tip of my finger. There was something about how old everything was, how it had all been there forever. Each and every thing seemed to have its own special spot in the world, even all the old books and magazines he kept stacked up around the place. Lester reads a whole lot, maybe even more than Robert.
I liked the photographs best, at least most of them. It was nice just to have some photographs around; we didn’t have any from before our house burned down. Lester looked happy in the ones with his daughter, Darlene, and his wife, Alantha. The only one I didn’t like was the one of his grandson, Jack. He didn’t look nice, not like Lester at all.
Lester said, “I wouldn’t worry about Baby Blue and that special school. Miss Woodruff’s a go-getter. She’ll be sure to get him in and get all the papers done up right, even if Doyle does give her a hard time. Nice woman; she’s got her head and her heart in the right places.”
“How’d she know we needed help?” I asked. “I know she’s a VISTA volunteer and working for the government and all that. But how’d she know to come here in the first place?”
Lester slowly got up from his chair. I handed him his cane. “Darn leg,” he whispered. And then louder, “I need me a deep-thinking drink. How about you?”
He went out the back door and pushed off the lid to the well at the edge of the back porch. Then he dropped in his old wooden bucket and hauled it back up. Oh, Lester has running water like we do, and an inside toilet. But he likes well water best and keeps the old well in good repair. He claims water from the tap is hardly fit for humans to drink, and that a swig of good well water—or even better, cold mountain spring water—clears the head and lets a body think.
After we both had a long cool drink from the metal ladle, Lester said, as he always did, “Ahh, the best water in the world.”
“Yup.” I nodded, smiling, and answered as I always did, “The best water in the world.”
“Actually,” Lester continued as he turned to go back in, “I’d already read about the president’s War on Poverty and those VISTA volunteers before Miss Woodruff got here. It’s a good thing overall, I think. Come here, let me show you something.”
We walked back into the house. In several corners of the kitchen were piles of magazines and newspapers. “Scrounge around through there. About a week or two ago I brought home a New York Times somebody gave me. Should be there somewhere.”
After a few minutes of digging through the pile, I found the newspaper. We opened it on the kitchen table. In the second section was an article about “the rural poor” and VISTA volunteers. Also there was a big picture right in the middle of the page. It was of a coal miner coming home, just the pale rings of his eyes and his white teeth shining out of his blackened face. In one hand he toted his lunch pail. The other hand was clasped onto a young one about Baby’s age, barefoot and dressed only in a ripped pair of underwear. A whole passel of young ones waited on the porch.
“It’s articles like this that gets folks like Miss Woodruff wanting to come and help,” Lester said.
“Old Joe at the hardware store called Miss Woodruff’an up-North do-gooder.’”
“You know, VISTA stands for Volunteers in Service to America,” he said. “Well, Miss Woodruff told me they volunteer to help people right here in America with things like schooling and getting folks their medical checkups and shots.”
“I know that part already,” I said. “What I want to know is, why’d she pick Baylor to come to?”
“She told me she’d seen some news recently on the TV and in the Cincinnati papers about the mines closing around here. So after she retired from working as a school administrator up North and there was an opportunity for her to come here, she said she didn’t have to think twice about it,” Lester said. “And I heard she’s getting some things done already. She’s getting kids registered for school early with this special Head Start program, like she’s trying to do for Baby Blue. Also, she
’s taking the miners’ kids from Greasy Ridge into Hiram in her own car so they can get their shots free and be ready for school, come fall. It’s good that folks get riled up and want to help.”
“Doyle seems to be riled up something awful lately, and that isn’t helping anybody, especially Baby,” I pointed out.
Lester sighed. “Well, that’s a different kind of riled up. He’s out of work, too, and probably feeling pretty touchy about out-of-town folks poking around.”
He paused and rubbed his stubbly jaw. “You see, it’s hard on a man when he can’t support his family in the way that he thinks he ought to. A man can get mighty ashamed of that. So Doyle, and others, get mad at do-gooders who come nosing around what they think of as their personal business. They end up losing their tempers and not taking advantage of things that’re to their own benefit. But if something good can come out of it, like Baby going to Head Start, where he can learn all kinds of things and get to the doctor’s, isn’t it worth it? And,” he added, pointing to the picture, “the other good thing is that some of these people, maybe they’ll get five or ten dollars from photographers for letting their pictures get taken. Five dollars would go a long way toward feeding some families for a week, and ten dollars would help pay the rent for a month for some folks.”
“Why would anybody pay so much just for a picture?” I asked. “Shoot! They could take my picture for less than that, if I was cleaned up first.”
“These writers, reporters, and photographers, they have reputations to keep up by showing what’s happening around the world, like it really is. They don’t want pretty snapshots with folks in their Sunday hats. They’re all trying to make us sadder, or madder than a hornet, so we’ll get up off our backsides and do something brave to make things change for the good, like Miss Woodruff.”
“Brave?” I asked. I’d thought that Miss Woodruff was just nice and all.
“Sure,” said Lester. “She came down here all by herself. Some folks welcomed her, and some folks, like Doyle, are downright mean and ornery to her. It takes a lot of gumption to do that. Miss Woodruff isn’t a spring chicken, either.” Lester shook his head. “But when something’s really important to a person, you’d be surprised how brave that person can be—like Robert today. It sounds like he was pretty brave, too.”