Spitting Image

by Shutta Crum

  I had my answer soon. Grandma barely slowed down as she careened onto that two-tracker. And then she splashed the car right across the creek, banging off rocks and jumping the Thunderbird this way and that.

  A rock outcropping made the car tilt scarily sideways—we were up on two wheels. Grandma maneuvered the Thunderbird and it bounced as it slipped down again— thunk!

  “That Curtis!” complained Grandma over the racket the car was making. “A two-year-old could build a better road than this with his eyes closed!” And then she let loose with a string of cuss words that made me sure God was going to strike us down before we even got there.

  I didn’t wonder what Grandma was going to do until we were almost to the house. Then I remembered she was scared to death of snakes. I asked myself if I should’ve kept on running to the Stanley farm, out on the main road. Maybe I should have made Grandma get Mr. Purchell to come back with us. But I hadn’t thought of it.

  Then we were in the clearing, and Grandma jumped out of the car. We took off past the house, me flat-out fast in my sneakers and Grandma bringing up the rear in her little yellow sandals. Now I was starting to get really worried. What the heck could Grandma do?

  At the barn we stopped, and I bent over and tried to get my breath back. When I raised my eyes, the first thing I saw was Ol’ One Eye curled up a few inches from Baby’s bare toes.

  Baby was singing a little song to himself. I could barely hear it. All the time he was singing he kept his eyes down and slightly away from the snake. It was almost like Baby was singing in his sleep. The snake had curled up as though it was trying to hear what Baby was singing.

  Dickie was about two feet away from the snake and as stiff as a fence post. I saw him flick his eyes nervously over toward us. I could just feel what was going through his mind. Maybe he could jump back. Maybe, if the snake did strike, it would go for Baby instead of him.

  I saw Grandma take the scene in. She turned away for a moment, as if she was going to be sick. Then she turned back and said loud enough for Dickie to hear, “You so much as flick an eyelash, Dickie Whitten, and I’ll skin you alive before I feed you to that snake!”

  Grandma turned on her heel and walked through the Whittens’ back door without knocking. A minute or two later she came out again. In her hands was a .22 rifle.

  twenty-seven

  MY MOUTH DROPPED OPEN, but I didn’t say a word. Grandma flipped her sunglasses up on top of her head and got a little bit in front of me. Then she hiked up her skirt, knelt down, and raised the .22 to her shoulder.

  When I looked at Dickie, he seemed more scared than ever. I’m sure he was wondering, What if she misses and startles the snake? What if she doesn’t miss, and my daddy’s favorite snake gets killed?

  I didn’t know if Grandma could shoot or not, but I thought that Dickie was on the verge of bolting. “Don’t move, Dickie,” I said as loud as I dared to.

  Grandma didn’t take too much time, but I could tell she was getting a good line on that snake. I wondered how her stomach was feeling. I’d seen what happened when she’d caught sight of an itty-bitty garter snake slipping through the grass. I gulped and prayed for her to stay steady.

  I saw the snake jump almost before I heard the crack of the rifle. Grandma rocked slightly from the kick the gun gave her. Then she brought it back to her shoulder, ready for a second shot. But it was obvious that Ol’ One Eye was dead; part of him had gone flying through the air.

  Dickie collapsed where he was and put his hands over his eyes. Even from where I was I could see him shaking and hear him crying.

  Baby slowly turned and watched as Grandma strode over to them. Grandma glanced at Dickie. Then she looked at what was left of Ol’ One Eye. A moment later she leaned against the barn wall with one hand and threw up.

  I grabbed Baby by the shoulders and pulled him away. I’d heard about snakes that could still bite even after they were dead. Ol’ One Eye’s coils were easily three times the thickness of my arm. I didn’t want Baby anywhere near that huge thing.

  Baby and I waited while Grandma went to the Whittens’ back porch to put the gun away. She opened up the chamber, shook the remaining bullets out, and gave it one last heft like she’d been handling rifles all her life before laying it down inside the back door.

  Then I heard somebody crashing through the underbrush and charging down the mountain, and Mr. Whitten came rushing around the barn. “Hey! What . . . what’s going on here?” he yelled. “Who’s shooting?”

  He came to a stop when he caught sight of Ol’ One Eye’s body on the ground beside Dickie. He looked at Dickie, and then at us. “Who shot my snake?”

  That’s when Dickie sprang to life and started scooting crab-like, trying to get as far away from his father as possible. “Dickie!” his daddy shouted. Dickie stopped suddenly, the tall weeds trembling above his head.

  “She did,” Dickie squeaked and pointed at Grandma as she came back to stand beside us. “She shot Ol’ One Eye!”

  Mr. Whitten swung around to glare at Grandma, like he was barely able to keep from exploding. I could feel her stiffen. She reached down and grabbed Baby Blue by one hand and tried to push me behind her with her other hand. The whole time, she never took her eyes off Mr. Whitten.

  “For your information, I just saved your son’s life!” Grandma snapped, lifting her chin. “Seems like you should be grateful.”

  “You,” Mr. Whitten spat out, shaking his knotty finger at her. “You get off my property. Now! Or I won’t be responsible for what happens.”

  “We were just leaving. Mister Whitten,” Grandma said. She slowly turned us around, and we marched back to the Thunderbird. Mr. Whitten followed. I remembered what Mama had said about Dickie’s daddy and I didn’t like having my back to him, but I could tell Grandma was keeping an eye on him.

  The once beautiful pure white Thunderbird looked like one of those cars from a demolition derby on TV. Long black scrapes covered both sides, except where the dents were too deep for the rocks and tree branches to have scraped across. The windows had crazy cracked patterns everywhere, and one of the headlights and a front fender had been smashed in.

  Baby and I scrambled in through the driver’s door and over to the other bucket seat. Grandma turned and stood just inside the open door. She reached down behind her with one hand and lifted her purse up off the floor of the car. The other hand was on the doorframe as she studied Mr. Whitten a couple of feet away.

  “Any gentleman would thank me, Curtis,” said Grandma.

  Mr. Whitten looked like he wanted to jump out of his skin. He flailed his hands about in the air like he was searching for something to grab on to, or like he wanted to wring Grandma’s neck. It was almost funny. And it was right then that I understood what Mama had been trying to tell me: no matter how mad you got, you had to learn to control it, to find a way to deal with it. Mr. Whitten had no control, and he was just plain ugly to look at.

  Suddenly, he lunged at Grandma. “Oh! Oh!” I screamed, fumbling with the door handle on the passenger side. Mr. Whitten was a whole lot bigger than my tiny grandma. He’d throw her over his shoulder like a scrap of paper if he got his hands on her.

  I was trying to scramble out of the car to help her when I heard a loud whop! Grandma had shoved the car door right into Mr. Whitten’s middle with one hand and then swung around and walloped him up alongside his head with her leopard-skin purse.

  “Keep an eye out for rocks, Jessica!” she shouted and jumped into the car before Mr. Whitten could get off the ground. She floored that Thunderbird, in reverse. We plowed up the ground in a big wide circle before she got it into forward and we took off.

  Quickly I rolled my window down as we circled past him. I leaned out and yelled, “And make Dickie give back that library book he stole!”

  We tore out of there like there was no tomorrow, bumping and jumping back down that drive. I couldn’t help but have a big smile on my face. Yes, sir, my grandma was one tough old biddy. Boy, was I
proud of her!

  We rocked and tipped our way down from the Whittens’ and forded Martin’s Creek again before bursting out onto Dog Gap Road. Only then did anyone speak.

  “I’ve got one thing to say to you, Jessica Kay,” Grandma started.

  Uh-oh. My smile disappeared. Here it comes. I knew I deserved every bit of what I was going to get for putting Baby’s life in danger. I braced myself. “Yes, ma’am?”

  Grandma looked quickly in her rearview mirror, smoothed her hair, and then grinned at me. “When you buy a purse, girl, you invest in a damn good one.”

  twenty-eight

  GRANDMA AND I SAT on the couch with our heads bowed and our hands in our laps as Mama paced back and forth, wearing a path in our green carpet and giving both of us what Lester calls “a frank talking-to.”

  Grandma tried to get a word in slantwise every so often, but she didn’t have much success. I didn’t dare open my mouth, other than to keep apologizing.

  I could understand why Mama was angry with me. I had put Baby’s life in danger, not to mention Dickie’s. But I didn’t understand why she was upset with Grandma, too. Grandma had saved the day. Leastways, that’s how I looked at it.

  Grandma tried to tell Mama about how I’d used my head, how I’d told them to not move, and how I’d gone for help right away when I’d seen somebody coming up the road. I could hardly believe it—Grandma was trying to stand up for me! Maybe that’s why Mama was also giving Grandma a piece of her mind.

  I kept my palms up and my knees out, hoping whenever Mama got a good look at the Mercurochrome and Band-Aids all over me she’d remember the good things I’d done. But it didn’t help much. We sat, Grandma and I, and listened.

  The worst part came when Mama went on about how was she ever going to be able to trust me again. She kept throwing her hands up in the air and saying things like, “You know I have to work. I thought I could trust you. I told you to stay out of trouble. I just don’t know what to do. I just don’t know what to do with you.

  “What am I supposed to do? Should I make you stay at the store with me, like I did when you were little? Should I get Araminta Boyd to check up on you all the time when I’m not here?” She stopped pacing and looked at me directly. “Jessie, I’ve got to trust you to do as you’re told. It isn’t going to work if you can’t be trusted.”

  “Er . . . er,” interrupted Grandma, raising her hand like she was in school. “Uh . . . I could stop by and stay with her, Mirabelle, till school starts up, if that’s what you want.”

  I wasn’t sure this was such a good idea. Though Grandma was my hero today, I knew how most of our run-ins ended.

  “What I want,” Mama said to Grandma, putting her hands on her hips, “is for her to act her age. She’s going to be thirteen on her next birthday, for goodness sake! She’s old enough that I shouldn’t have to worry about her every time I turn my back. I thank God that Miss Woodruff let somebody know where they were.”

  I must have said I was sorry at least forty-seven-eleven times. I didn’t know what else I could say in my defense. I could see now that facing down a rattlesnake just to get a library book back didn’t seem highly reasonable. And I wasn’t even sure we were ever going to see that book again.

  Finally, Mama sank down with a sigh in our old wing chair across from the couch. “What’s Beryl Ann going to think?” she asked. Then she limply waved her hand, sending me off to my room. She didn’t even bother to ground me.

  Somehow, her not having the energy to do that and looking so tired and worn out made me sad. More than anything I wanted Mama to be proud of me. But it seemed so hard to be good in the way she wanted me to be. Maybe Mrs. Beaumont was right; kids like me were just plain bad. Maybe there was no getting around it.

  Mama was so good, and she worked so hard. She didn’t deserve a daughter like me. I wanted to disappear. I curled up into a ball on my bed and cried until I fell asleep.

  When I woke up, Grandma was sitting on the end of the bed watching me. “You look like you got chewed up and spit out by a bear,” she said.

  “Thanks, Grandma,” I moaned, stretching and sitting up. For some reason, what she said didn’t get my dander up. I crossed my legs and took a few swipes at my crusty eyes with the backs of my hands. My throat was dry and I was having a hard time swallowing. “I need a drink of water.”

  Grandma got up and soon came back with a tall glass of water. “Here you go,” she said. She sat back down and looked at her sandals and then at me. “You run pretty fast.”

  I smiled. “You shoot pretty good.”

  Grandma nodded her head. “I used to be a crack shot in my day. Ralph—you may not remember him, he was my second husband—he liked to put up targets in the back yard. We’d practice almost every day. But that stopped when Ralph died.”

  “Ralph died?” I asked, amazed. “I thought my real grandpa was the only one that died. I thought you divorced all the rest.”

  “Lordy, no! Ralph and your grandpa both died of natural causes. The others . . . ah, well. Mistakes.” Grandma looked uncomfortable. “Maybe I just divorced the others before they could up and die on me. Who knows? I’m jinxed, I guess.”

  “Grandma! You’re not jinxed! You saved Baby and Dickie today. And you didn’t have anything to do with Grandpa Henry dying, or Ralph.”

  “I know, I know. But people talked, especially after Ralph. He had a heart attack. Some said maybe I ruined his health or wore him out on pupose. Just because there was a little money he left me. Did you ever hear anything so ridiculous?” Grandma paused for a deep breath. “The truth is, I wouldn’t have hurt a hair on his head. He was a good man, like your Grandpa Henry.”

  I couldn’t believe it! Grandma was actually talking to me. Maybe I could get some of my questions answered. I grabbed one of her hands. “Grandma, tell me about Grandpa Henry. I’ve never even seen a picture of him.”

  Grandma stiffened and took her hand out of mine. “Now, why do you want to bring that up? He’s been dead so long. The thing to do is to look to the future.”

  I was starting to get mad again. I knew any truce with Grandma was going to be a short one, but I’d hoped that for once . . . just for once . . ..I took a deep breath and stopped myself. I didn’t know exactly how to say what I needed to say, but I had to get it said.

  I closed my eyes and said it as straight as I could. “Because . . . I don’t even know what color Grandpa’s eyes were. Because I don’t have any history—nothing. Because Lester’s got things that have been there forever, but I don’t have a grandpa anymore, and I don’t have a daddy, either. And I don’t have pictures of anybody, except you and Mama. That’s why!” I opened my eyes to discover I’d been pounding on the bed with my clenched fist.

  When I finally glanced at Grandma, after taking several shaky breaths, she had gone all wide-eyed. “Gracious, girl,” she said. “All right, then, we’ll talk.” She crossed her legs and bounced her yellow-sandaled foot up and down. “You don’t have to get hot under the collar about it.”

  I rolled my eyes at her. Then I settled against my pillows and unfolded my legs.

  “Well, first off, your Grandpa Henry had the most beautiful green eyes.”

  “He did?” I asked, sitting quickly back up.

  “Of course he did,” she snorted. “Where’d you think yours came from, the Piggly Wiggly? Now, quit interrupting me if you insist on hearing all this.”

  I sat back, smiling.

  “As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted”—she arched an eyebrow over at me—“he had the most beautiful smiling green eyes. Just like yours. In fact, you’re the spitting image of Henry.”

  “I am?”

  Grandma rolled her eyes at me.

  twenty-nine

  GRANDMA TOLD ME ALL about Grandpa Henry, how he liked to raise African violets and dry his own corn to make popcorn for the local kids, and how he was always repairing things. He’d repaired the old house a hundred times, their old Studebaker, and a stran
ge wooden footstool that was so ugly folks commented upon it. He kept repairing it every time it broke, even though Grandma hated it. It got to be such an ugly “pet” of a thing that she couldn’t bring herself to think about throwing it away while he was alive. It was the first thing she tossed out after he died of a ruptured appendix.

  The Hiram hospital was just being built, and by the time anyone realized what was wrong, it was too late to repair Grandpa.

  Then Grandma told me about losing the house five years after Grandpa died. She said that when the house went up in flames, with all the memories of him that it held, it was like losing Grandpa all over again. She didn’t have any good pictures of him herself, just one small tattered snapshot that had been in her pocketbook the night of the fire. She pulled it out of her red leather wallet for me to see.

  It had been cut down and was only about two inches square. A happy man in dress slacks, his white shirt open at the neck, had one foot up on the fender of an old car. “He loved that car. A 1941 Mercury coupe,” Grandma said, shaking her head. “Until he ran it into the Little Red River one foggy night. Then he went out and bought the Studebaker. I never liked that Studebaker. I couldn’t get him to sell it. I even threatened to run it into the river myself!”

  Grandma sighed. “But Henry wouldn’t have it. He kept fixing that car up. Finally, it got so he was the only one who could drive it. You know, Henry taught me to drive in the Studebaker.”

  “You drive good,” I said.

  Grandma laughed. “Well, it looks like I’m going to need a new car now. I don’t know if the Thunderbird can be fixed.” Then, with a twinkle in her eye, she slapped the bed. “Ha! Maybe I need to go on a scouting trip. What do you think about that?”