by James Still
“This rooster’s a pet,” I said. “When I tuk him out o’ the coop, he jumped square onto my shoulder and crowed. I’m taking a liking to him.”
“I jist lack selling fourteen seed papers gitting my eyeball. Never could I sell dills and rutabagas. If Steph will buy the rest, I’ll rid my part. We got nowheres earthy to store a chicken.”
“I hain’t a-mind to sell.”
Fedder packed the ground where he stood. The seeds rattled. The rooster pricked his head.
“You stay here till I git Steph,” Fedder said. He swung around. “You stay.”
He went in haste, and suddenly a great silence fell in the camp. The coal conveyor at the mines had stopped. Men stood at the drift mouth and looked down upon the rooftops. It was so still I could hear the far per-chic-o-ree of finches. I held the rooster at arm’s length, wishing him free as a bird. I half hoped he would fly away. I set him on the fence, but he hopped to my shoulder and shook his wattles.
Back along the road came Fedder. Steph Harben hastened with him, wearing a shirt like striped candy, and never a man wore a finer one. The shirt was thinny—so thin that when he stood before me I could see the paddles of his collarbones.
Fedder said, “I’ve sold my part. Hit’s you two trading.”
Steph said, “Name yore price. Name.”
I gathered the fowl in my arms. “I hain’t a-mind to sell,” I said.
We turned to stare at miners passing, going home long before quitting time, their cap lamps burning in broad day.
Steph was anxious. “Why hain’t you willing?” he asked. “Name.”
I dug my toe into the ground, scuffing dirt. “I love my rooster,” I said. But I looked at Steph’s shirt. It was very beautiful.
“If’n you’ll sell,” Fedder promised, “I’ll let you spy at my eye pocket. Now, while it’s thar, you kin look. Afore long I’ll have a glass ’un.”
I kicked a clod into the road. “I’ll swap my part o’ the rooster for that striped shirt. It can be cut down to fit.”
“Shuck it off,” Fedder told Steph.
Steph unbuttoned the shirt, slipped it over the blades of his shoulders, and handed it to me in a wad. He snatched the rooster, lighting out for home, and miners along the road glared at his bare back.
Fedder brushed his hat aside, catching the eye patch between forefinger and thumb. I was suddenly afraid, suddenly having no wish to see.
The patch was lifted. I looked, stepping back, squeezing the shirt into a ball. I turned running, running with this sight burnt upon my mind.
I ran all the way home, going into the kitchen door as Father went, not staying the sow-cat that stole in between my legs. Mother sat at the table, a pile of greenbacks before her, the empty pay pockets crumpled.
“Hell’s bangers!” Father gasped, dropping heavily upon a chair and lifting the baby to his knee; and when he could speak above his wonder, “The boom’s busted. I’ve got no job.” But he laughed, and Mother smiled.
“I’ve heard already,” Mother said. She laid a hand upon the money bills, flicking them under a thumb like a deck of gamble cards. “There’s enough here to build a house, a house with windows looking out o’ every room. And a grain left for a pair o’ costy boots, a boughten shirt, a fact’ry dress, a few pretties.”
The baby opened his mouth, curling his lips, pointing a stub finger. He pointed at the old nanny smelling the fish kit.
“Cat!” he said, big as life.
Snail Pie
Though Maw’s face was pale with anger, she didn’t speak until Grandpaw Splicer and Leaf and I pushed back our plates. Grandpaw went to the barn to light his pipe, and Leaf followed to ask about the rattlesnake steak Grandpaw claimed he once ate. I crawled under the house, squatting beneath the kitchen floor, listening. I had a mind to learn whether Pap was going to tell of catching me chewing a wad of Old Nine. Maw was as set as a wedge against tobacco. She wouldn’t spare the limber-jim. I heard her heel strike the floor impatiently; I heard the rounds of Pap’s chair groan in the peg holes.
“Your step-paw has to hush his lie-tales at the table,” Maw said, her voice pitching high in her nose. “Since he’s come a meal hasn’t rested easy in my stomach. We ought to send him back to the county farm.”
“Forty years a drummer,” Pap said, “forty years of drumming the mountain counties. He’s too old to change his ways.” The leather of Pap’s shoes creaked. “Without a line of big-eyed lies he couldn’t have sold gnat balls and devil’s snuff boxes. That’s what he vows peddling. He’s always been a big hand to tease, and means no harm.”
“Every time he sticks his feet under the table he talks of pickled ants or fried snails. His idee of being funny. The name of snails I never could stand, much less than the sight of them. Why, my innards turn at the word. And that pipe, foul as a pig pen. I told him straight off a whiff of tobacco smoke sickens me. I warned him to keep it outside of the house.”
“Paw’s a right smart company for the boys,” Pap reminded. In my head I could see him saucering his coffee and blowing across it. “Keeps them occupied, and from under foot. Before he came I couldn’t go bird-hunting without them whining to be along.” Bird-hunting was Pap’s delight. Maw called it his foolishness.
Maw’s voice dropped from anger to dull complaint, “Doty and childish, worse than a child. My opinion, his mind is slipping. Why, he might even teach the boys to smoke. I can’t get Todd to say what he talks about to them, but Leaf once did. He told an awful thing about a mole.”
“Aye, I figure Pap keeps a good eye on the boys. You’d not know they were wormy if he hadn’t found out. And he offered to locate some boneset to purge them.”
“I’m no witch to start brewing herb tea,” Maw said. “A bottle of vermifuge from the store will do the job.”
“Come spring,” Pap said, “Paw can hoe the garden. Nothing and nobody will fight weeds like an old man. I’ll pay him a little to keep him in heart.”
“We promised to try him for a month,” Maw said. “A single month and not a day beyond.” Her words were cold and level. “For three weeks he’s been here, and he brings up the subject of moles, slugs, or fish bait every meal. I say you’ve got to speak to him. He’ll quieten or go back to the county farm. The next time he mentions snails—”
Pap clapped his empty saucer against the tabletop. “You oughtn’t be so finicky,” he declared. He shoved back his chair and got up. I heard dishes clink fit to break. “I hate like rip to call the old man down. I hate to.” And then, anger rising, he blurted, “Putting one’s kin in the poorhouse is a lately-happening business. A scandal shame! For all time past the agey have been cared for at home, pampered in their last days, indulged and cherished.”
“If you’d heard what he told Leaf,” Maw countered, her voice shrill. Pap’s hand was surely twisting the doorknob. “If you’d heard—”
Pap slammed the door so fiercely the skillets rattled behind the stove.
I hurried from under the house and ran to the barn. Leaf stalked the calf lot on johnny-walkers Grandpaw Splicer had made for him. Grandpaw sat in the crib whittling a cob, smoking and chewing. He was shaping a new pipe bowl with his Barlow knife.
“Grandpaw,” I said, “you never did tell me about that mole.”
Grandpaw Splicer’s eyes rounded, questioning. “Mole?” he made strange.
“You told Leaf,” I reminded, acting slighted.
“Ah, yes,” Grandpaw said, “what some fellers done with a mole varmint.”
He blew a tobacco cud onto a shuck. He knocked pipe ashes into a crack. Then he opened his mouth suddenly, stuck out his tongue, and drew it back in, exploring. “By the gods!” he said, “I’ve lost another tooth.” He spied into the shuck, and there it was. He pulled out his false plate to inspect the gap in it. “I need me a new set of teeth, but I’ve no money. It would take many a frog skin. Before long I’ll have to gum my food and tobacco.”
“I heard Pap say he was aiming to pay you a wage,” I s
aid. “I did, now.”
“Ho!” Grandpaw breathed. The blue flecks in his watery eyes shone. “Ah!” He looked almost happy. He pitched the tooth into a poke of seed corn and said, “There’s one grain that will never sprout.” And he began to whack at the nub of the cob in earnest. A kink of smoke twisted from his pipe and the crib filled with the mellow smell of tobacco, ripe and sweet and pungent.
I watched the shaping of the cob, drawing in deep breaths of burning tobacco. “Grandpaw,” I said, “I wish you were making that ’un for me.”
Grandpaw grunted, clicking his dental plates. “I knowed of a baby once was learnt to smoke in the cradle. Rather to draw on a pipe than his mammy’s tit. Gee-o, if that little ’un didn’t grow up to be six feet and weighed two hundred pounds. Tobacco was good for his constitution.”
“I’ve been smoking a spell,” I confessed.
Grandpaw chuckled. “I figured it was you who slobbered on my pipe stem yesterday. That’s why I’m whittling a new one.”
“Be the old ’un for me?” I questioned, hoping.
“Now, no,” Grandpaw said, “your mommy hates tobacco like the Devil hates Sunday. She’d hustle me back to the county farm before sundown did I give it to you. But if there comes a day you’re bound to smoke, just steal this ’un I’m making. I never relished anybody using my regular pipe. People oughten to smoke after each other. Onhealthy.”
The bowl of the pipe was nearly finished. Only the marrow of the cob lacked scraping.
“Grandpaw,” I said, “I’m scared you’re a-going to be sent back. I heard Mommy talking.”
“Hear!” Grandpaw chuffed. He put the Barlow down slowly and the pipe bowl fell from his hand. He dipped into the seed corn, filling the pan of his hand with grains, lifting, pouring. His lower lip stuck out blue and swollen, the gray bag of his chin quivered. “Todd,” he spoke, “you tell me exactly what your mommy said and I’ll chop you out a pair of johnny-walkers like your brother’s.”
“I choose that pipe,” I bargained.
“I’d rather to die than go back,” Grandpaw moaned. “Folks there perished already, just won’t give up and lay down. Coffin boxes waiting in the woodshop. A pure death house. Aye, it’s cruel. Cruel like what fellers done with a mole once.” His eyes dampened, his hands shook, scattering corn. “You know what some jaspers done? They started a mole in the rear end of a bull yearling. That bully ran a mile, taking on terrible, and fell stone down dead.”
“I’ll keep that pipe tater-holed,” I assured. “Nary an eye shall touch it.”
“I long to stay on here.”
I peeped through the cracks to see that no one was about. Leaf tramped the far side of the lot on his walkers. I told Grandpaw what Mommy had said and he listened, an arm elbow-deep in the corn sack. “Never tell Leaf nary a nothing,” I warned. “He’s bad to repeat. Just six years old, and he doesn’t know any better. And don’t mention snails.”
“I’ll play quiet-Bob,” Grandpaw said. “By jacks, I will.”
We heard Leaf coming crockety-crock on his johnny-walkers. He stuck his head in through the door. “Grandpaw,” he yelled, his mouth curling with mischief, “did you ever eat a horse apple?”
On Saturday Pap went bird-hunting, and there were quails’ breasts for dinner, and gravy brown as cured burley. We sat at the table watching Maw cut the breasts in half. She served her plate and passed the dish. Leaf and I had been starved for two days, having taken the vermifuge Thursday and forbidden to eat a bite since. We could hardly wait longer. Our stomachs were about grown together.
Pap grinned at the dish. The breasts were no larger than a child’s fist. His jaws set with pride. He had brought down three birds with one of his shots, bagged nine all together; and he had prepared them as well, for Maw would never clean a fowl. He glanced at Grandpaw, seeking a good word for his prowess. “Three with one shot,” Pap boasted. “You hear me? Three!”
Grandpaw’s teeth clicked. His lower lip puckered, and I knew he had thought of something to tell. He raised grizzly eyebrows, wondering if he dared.
“One blast, three bobs,” Pap crowed. “And that’s no fish tale.” His mouth smacked. “Ever see such mud-fat ones?”
“Hit was quare how I killed a bobwhite once,” Grandpaw related. He spoke slowly, picking his words, being careful. “Years ago when I lived in the head of Jump Up Hollow I went a-fishing on Shikepoke Creek. I caught so plagued many I had no place to put ’em. I just shucked off my breeches, tied knots in the leg-ends, and filled ’em with the prettiest redeyes and bigmouth bass ever was. So many fish I had to pack that a button popped off. And dadburn if that button didn’t fly off and kill a bobwhite.”
“Sounds like the truth to me,” Pap laughed. “I believe ever word.” He winked at Maw. She had stopped eating, uncertain. Then she took another bite. Maw did mortally relish partridge.
Leaf spoke, his mouth full. “Grandpaw, where is Jump Up Hollow? I be to go there.”
“Ah,” Grandpaw said, poking a lip out. “Why, hit’s so far backside of nowhere folks have to use ’possums for yard dogs and owls for roosters.”
“I bet that hain’t the truth,” Leaf said.
“Swear to my thumb to my dum,” Grandpaw said.
“I know me a tale and it shore happened,” Leaf said. His eyes lit. He glanced at me and Grandpaw. I got a grain fidgety, for Leaf was bad to tittle-tattle.
“Truth?” Maw asked doubtfully. “I say keep it for another occasion. Truth won’t spoil.” And she served her plate again.
“Hear me,” Grandpaw said, thinking back into his skull for another yarn. “It wasn’t always good times in Jump Up Hollow. Once a hard winter come. Ninety days snowfall, ninety days hovering zero. Well, s’r, I gave out of bread and I gave out of meat. Not a lick of sweetening was left in the ’lassy barrel. Not a speck of nothing to eat the size of the chine-bone of a gnat.”
Maw laid her fork down, waiting. Her mouth was full, but she didn’t swallow. I tried to catch Grandpaw’s eyes but he was carried away in his telling. He paid me no mind. He lifted a hand, laying off the story-piece. I tried to poke him with a foot under the table but my leg wasn’t long enough.
“Well, now,” Grandpaw went on, “I got my old hog-rifle and searched the woods. Not a sight or sound of beast or varmint could I see or hear. But hello! In the sky there was a buzzard flying. I took hair aim and fetched him down with a single crack, and I ’gin to rip the feathers.”
Pap opened his mouth to laugh, but Maw stared angrily at him. She had paled; her lips were tight against her teeth. Pap gulped, undecided. I slid low in my chair and kicked Grandpaw’s knee. He grunted. He glanced at me in a fashion to let me understand he wasn’t getting carried away.
“Did you cook that there buzzard?” Leaf asked. “Now, no,” Grandpaw replied. “I gathered the hungry smell in the meat box, mixed it with frost bite, and fried it with a smidgen of axle grease. Hit made good eating.”
Maw swallowed at last. She stared at the victuals in her plate. I felt relieved, though I wished Grandpaw had played quiet-Bob as he had promised.
“I know me a tale,” Leaf said, “and hit’s the truth. I be to tell it.”
“The truth?” Maw asked sharply.
“Gourd-head and tell,” Pap joked. I could see he was glad Grandpaw hadn’t eaten the buzzard.
“Be certain it is the truth,” Maw warned, her voice pitching high and thin. “We could do with some honest speaking.”
Grandpaw lifted his chin. He was a whet anxious.
“It was this morning,” Leaf began. “That there worm medicine was pinching my stomach.”
Maw grasped the tabletop. Her knuckle whitened; her face blanched the color of dough.
“I went in behind the barn,” Leaf went on, “and there was Grandpaw and Todd a-smoking. Todd smoking a cob pipe Grandpaw made for him, a-blowing smoke big as Ike Pike. I be to have me a pipe too.”
Grandpaw’s chin quivered. His shoulders sagged, and he leaned forward and his eye
s overflowed. Tears coursed the wrinkles of his cheeks, and he seemed old, old.
Leaf stared and hushed. He couldn’t think why Grandpaw Splicer wept. His lips trembled. “Grandpaw,” he said, trying to patch the hurt, “did you ever eat a snail pie?”
The Moving
We stood by the loaded wagon while Father nailed the windows down and spat into the keyholes to make the locks turn. We waited, restless as the harnessed mare, anxious to hasten beyond staring eyes. Hardstay mine was closed for all time and idle men had gathered to watch us leave. They hung over the fence; they crowded where last year’s dogtick stalks clutched their brown leaf-hands into fists.
I saw the boys glance at our windowpanes, their pockets bulging with rocks. I spied into their faces and homesickness grew large inside of me. I hungered for a word, a nod of farewell. But only a witty was sad at my going, only a child of a man who valued strings and tobacco tags, a chap in a man’s clothes who was bound forever to speak things backwards. Hig Sommers stood beg-eyed, and fellows were picking at him. One knelt and jerked loose the eel-strings of his brogans.
Though women watched from their porches only a widow-woman came to say a good-bye to Mother. Sula Basham came walking, tall as a butterweed, and with a yellow locket swinging from her neck like a clockweight.
Loss Tramble spoke, grinning, “If I had a woman that tall, I’d string her with gourds and use her for a martin pole. I would, now.” A dry chuckle rattled in the crowd. Loss stepped back, knowing the muscle frogs of her arms were the size of any man’s.
Sula towered over Mother. The locket dropped like a plum. Mother was barely five feet tall and she had to look upward as into the sky; and her eyes set on the locket, for never had she owned a grain of gold, never a locket, or a ring, or bighead pin. Sula spoke loudly to Mother, glancing at the men with scorn: “You ought to be proud that your man’s not satisfied to rot in Hardstay camp, a-setting on his chine-bone. Before long all’s got to move, all’s got to roust or starve. This mine hain’t opening agin. Hit’s too nigh dug out.”