by Tony Earley
Jim wanted the dollar, but he wasn’t as intent on winning it as he might have been earlier. Mr. Carson’s story still swirled brightly inside his head. He could see Lynn’s Mountain rising in the blue distance above the heads of the crowd. Amos Glass still lived on the mountain. That simple fact gave Mr. Carson’s story the immediacy of a dream that for a moment had slid with its strangeness into the waking world. Jim thought, My daddy wasn’t afraid. And he thought, My daddy outsmarted Amos Glass. And because Amos Glass still lived in a place Jim could see, it was easy for him to imagine his father up there somewhere, maybe slipping through the woods with a squirrel rifle or fishing in a clear creek. And these thoughts opened up a longing he could feel tingling in the backs of his legs. He wondered if his father, looking down from the mountainside, would be able to see Aliceville — the red school on top of the hill, the crowd gathered on the playground, the boys waiting in line to climb the greasy pole, and the one boy, staring up at the mountain, who wanted to see him more than anything.
Penn, who stood in line in front of Jim, turned around.
“I think one of us is going to get the dollar,” he said. “We’re the first big boys.”
“Looks that way,” said Jim. “Have you ever seen my granddaddy?”
Penn nodded. “He used to sit out on the porch before he got sick.”
“What does he look like?”
Penn shrugged. “He’s real old.”
“Did you see him a lot?”
“Some. His house is pretty close to ours.”
“You’ve seen his house?”
“Yep.”
In Jim’s mind, Amos Glass’s house had long been a place where history had happened, like Fort Sumter or Gettysburg.
“That’s where my daddy grew up,” Jim said. “That’s where my daddy lived until he came down here.”
“I know.”
Penn turned again toward the greasy pole — it was almost his turn to go — but then turned back to Jim.
“Good luck, I guess,” he said.
“You too,” said Jim.
When Penn’s turn came, he took a running start and leapt onto the pole, a tactic that gained him precious altitude. None of the other boys had thought to try it. He began to slide back down instantly. He hugged the pole mightily with his arms and scraped at it with the hard edges of his shoe soles. Sliding still lower, he gritted his teeth and attacked the pole furiously. In rapid succession he pushed with his feet and pulled with his arms and pushed with his feet and pulled with his arms, until — everybody saw it — he checked his descent and for a few precious seconds actually began to inch upward. The crowd let out a hoarse shout.
Over the roar, Jim could hear Mr. Carson yelling, “Come on, Penn! Come on, Penn!”
Penn fought back to the height at which he had leapt onto the pole and then moved slightly past it, kicking and slapping at the pole, his feet then his arms gaining traction for a fraction of a second and then slipping. His face slowly turned scarlet and took on a furious, almost frightening expression; Jim could tell that Penn had simply decided he was not going to touch the ground until the dollar was his.
But after a while, despite Penn’s determination, his energy began to flag and his effort slowed. He lost a little of the height he had gained, redoubled his effort, gained it back, then lost a little more. Even as he slid lower and lower on the pole, the fierce look on his face did not change. Jim could see that he wasn’t going to give up. Eventually, however, even though he pulled his knees almost into his chest, his feet were just a few inches off of the ground. Even then, with his last remaining energy, Penn fought the greasy pole. Jim found himself almost pulling for his rival.
When Penn’s feet touched the ground, he collapsed onto his back and lay on the ground with his eyes closed. His hair was wet with sweat and his breath came in ragged gasps. The insides of his forearms were red and raw-looking, and the front of his overalls was shiny and tacky with tree sap. Mr. Carson came out of the crowd and helped Penn to his feet. As he led Penn away, the crowd clapped respectfully.
“Good try, Penn,” Jim said as Penn walked by.
Penn nodded but did not look up.
The crowd grew silent for a moment, but when Uncle Coran bellowed, “Go get ‘em, Jim!” everyone began yelling his name.
Jim looked at the pole, which suddenly seemed as tall and forbidding as Jack’s bean stalk. He felt his heart flutter coldly inside his chest, a small shirt frozen on a clothesline, the winter wind blowing through it. He knew suddenly he couldn’t climb the pole, but did not know how to get out of trying. He heard Uncle Zeno’s voice separate itself from the noise and urge him on: “Let’s go, Doc. You can do it!” He felt weak and dizzy, but his feet began to inch toward the pole, without his willing them to. Suddenly, the thing that had been holding him back snapped inside his chest, and he ran forward in a rush, as if preparing to jump out of a hayloft or from a tall rock into the river.
He leapt onto the pole as Penn had done, bruising both shins and almost knocking the wind out of himself. He immediately felt himself sliding toward the ground. He squeezed the pole as hard as he could with his arms and scrabbled at it with his feet and pushed into it with the heels of his shoes. He felt himself stop sliding. He put his weight on both feet and pushed himself up. He was surprised when he was able to stand up almost straight before his feet slipped. He squeezed the pole tightly against his chest and pulled his legs up underneath him. When he pushed with his legs, he again traveled up the pole. The pole was still slippery, and climbing it wasn’t easy, but Jim suddenly knew that it was something he could do.
In short order he passed the height Penn had reached, and kept going. The pole was more slippery higher up, but it was also skinnier, allowing him to wrap his legs around twice, which kept him from sliding downward. Because the pole was slippery, he could only move up a few inches at a time with each push of his legs, but he also made steady progress. Jim looked up and saw the dollar bill getting closer and closer. He looked down and saw the ground a surprising distance below him. His heart leapt because he knew he was going to be the winner.
Finally, he reached up and almost delicately plucked the dollar from the tack that held it to the pole. He shoved it into the pocket of his overalls. He hooked his arm over the top of the pole and looked down into the crowd beneath him, trying to find Mama or the uncles. His name rose up to him in a shout, but as he scanned the faces shouting up at him, he didn’t see anyone he knew. Uncle Zeno would say later that Jim had looked like a possum, grinning from a tree limb. And Jim would say, much, much later, that, with half the county baying around the bottom of the pole, he had felt like one.
The only person Jim recognized from the top of the pole was Penn. And he was surprised to see that Penn was smiling and clapping, as if he was pleased that Jim, and not himself, had made it to the top of the pole and claimed the prize. Penn waved at Jim, and for a heartbeat Jim felt bad about winning the money. He slid down the pole with his prize in his pocket, where he found Mama and the uncles waiting for him. The uncles clapped him on the back so hard it almost hurt.
“Oh, Jim,” Mama said, “your daddy would be so proud of you.”
Uncle Al scooped him up and sat him on his shoulder. Wherever he looked people were smiling up at him and clapping. He felt like the king of the world. He patted his pocket to make sure that his dollar was still there.
Jim walked backward down the hill, holding his dollar over his head with both hands, so Mama and the uncles could see it better.
“Pretty proud of yourself, aren’t you boy?” Uncle Coran said.
Jim sang, “I got a dollar. I got a dollar.”
“All right, Doc,” Uncle Zeno said. The uncles didn’t like bragging.
Jim kept singing. “I beat Penn Carson. I beat Penn Carson.”
“Jim …,” warned Mama.
“Well, I did,” Jim said. “I beat that hillbilly.”
“Jim!” Mama said.
She and the unc
les stopped and looked at Jim sadly. Uncle Zeno lowered himself to one knee and said, “Come here, Doc.”
Jim lowered his arms and pushed the dollar back into his pocket. He walked forward until Uncle Zeno clasped him by the shoulders and looked him in the eye.
“That’s right,” Uncle Zeno said. “You beat Penn Carson. But do you know why?”
Jim shook his head.
“You beat him because he had most of the sap from that poplar tree on the front of his overalls. That made the pole not as slippery for you. You won because he helped you.”
“Nobody ever gets anything all by himself,” Uncle Al said.
“It’s the truth,” said Uncle Coran.
“Think of where we would be if it wasn’t for the uncles,” said Mama. “We wouldn’t have a thing in this world.”
“Do you understand?” Uncle Zeno asked.
Jim nodded.
Uncle Zeno turned him around and lightly swatted him on the bottom.
“Let’s go on home then.”
And when Jim started again down the hill, part of him was ashamed of his bragging, and ashamed of the resentment he harbored toward Penn, a boy of whom, he now admitted to himself, he was jealous. But in another part of him, the memory of beating Penn was too fresh. Every time he thought of looking down from the top of the pole while the crowd yelled his name, his blood raced anew in memory of his triumph. The two parts of him argued between themselves as he walked down the hill. One side wanted to be a boy the uncles would approve of; the other side silently sang, I got a dollar. I got a dollar.
King
FIRST JIM and Uncle Zeno passed Abraham’s ancient truck clacking up the state highway toward New Carpenter. Abraham waved out the window as they sped by. Then they passed the convicts: two lean white men burned the color of dirt by the sun, their shirts tied around their heads like turbans, digging beside the highway with long posthole diggers. The convicts were chained together at the ankle, but Jim didn’t see that until the last moment before the truck passed, when, just as he noticed the chain, one of the convicts glanced up and for a long heartbeat looked him in the eye. As Jim wheeled in the seat and watched the two convicts, and the sleepy-looking guard who watched over them, grow smaller in the rear glass, he felt deliriously frightened. He worried for a moment that the convicts, who, with each hole they dug, got closer to Aliceville, were chained only to each other, and not to anything else.
Beyond the convicts, they passed the conical, evenly spaced piles of earth that marked the holes the convicts had dug. Each hole would eventually hold a tall, black pole; each pole would hold up the wires that brought electricity to Aliceville. The convicts, whom Uncle Zeno had nicknamed Coran and Al, had been digging the holes all summer, although as of yet, not one of the holes had sprouted a pole.
The day was a Saturday, an Indian summer day so bright and warm that it made Jim want to roll around in the grass and stretch like a cat. He and Uncle Zeno were on their way to New Carpenter with the windows rolled down. The trees on the far sides of the fields were gold and yellow and orange, which became — when Jim squinted enough — a fire on a western prairie. Uncle Zeno, as usual, had to see a man about a dog. Jim told Uncle Zeno he would help him put the dog in the truck.
Three miles outside of New Carpenter they topped a slight rise in the road and saw in the distance, for the first time, a long line of black power poles tottering toward them like giants, the cross pieces that would support the stretched wires sticking out to the sides of each pole like short, stiff arms.
“Well, well, well,” said Uncle Zeno. “Looky coming here.”
He slowed down and pulled off the highway up next to the dirt pile marking the last empty hole before the lines of poles began. He and Jim got out and walked to the front of the truck to take a look. The poles seemed alive to Jim, vaguely ominous in their great, skinny height, standing still only because he was watching them. He found that by moving his head a little to one side, he could make all the poles disappear behind the nearest one; that by leaning far to one side, and then quickly to the other, he could make the whole line wag like a tail. He stopped when he heard Abraham’s truck approaching behind them on the highway. He didn’t want Abraham to see him acting like a kid. Abraham pulled up even with Uncle Zeno and stopped without pulling off the road.
“Mr. McBride?” he yelled over the racketing of his truck. “Did y’all break down? Do you need any help?”
“No thanks, Abe,” Uncle Zeno yelled back, pointing at the power poles. “We’re just looking.”
Abraham nodded and waved and drove away. He had two bushels of apples in the back of his truck. Jim felt a little irritated that Abraham would be in New Carpenter while he and Uncle Zeno were. He still secretly resented Abraham for taking the good hoe on his birthday.
“I guess they’ll put a pole in this one next week,” Uncle Zeno said, nudging the piece of scrap board covering the hole with his toe. “Let’s see if the jailbirds are doing a good job.”
He leaned over and flipped the board off the hole. The hole was so deep and shadowed that it took a moment for Jim’s eyes to adjust enough to see the bottom.
“This is a good hole,” Uncle Zeno pronounced. “It’s the same size at the bottom that it is at the top. A lazy man digs postholes that are big at the top and little at the bottom. You can’t set a post in a hole like that.”
Jim studied the hole more closely, and made a point of trying to remember what Uncle Zeno had said. Jim made a point of trying to remember everything the uncles said about work.
“It looks to be eight or nine feet deep,” Uncle Zeno said, glancing over at Jim. “You want to find out how deep it is?”
Jim nodded and looked around for something to stick down in the hole. Then he noticed that the hole was big enough for his shoulders to fit through, and realized what Uncle Zeno had meant. Uncle Zeno got down on one knee and took Jim by the wrist. Jim stepped off into the hole and Uncle Zeno lowered him into the ground.
“Don’t drop me,” Jim said, looking up at Uncle Zeno just before he passed out of the sunlight on his way down.
“Hang on, Doc,” said Uncle Zeno.
Inside the hole, the air was immediately cool, November-feeling. The ground smelled old, forgotten, and made Jim think of crickets singing late in the evening before the first frost. When Uncle Zeno lay flat on his stomach, Jim still hadn’t found the bottom of the hole. He bicycled with his feet, trying to find solid earth; he tried looking down but could not see past his legs into the darkness. When he looked up, he found Uncle Zeno’s body blocking most of the daylight. He squeezed Uncle Zeno’s wrist tighter.
“I ain’t touched the bottom yet,” Jim said. “You can pull me up now.”
“My hand’s slipping, Doc,” Uncle Zeno said in a strained voice.
“Don’t drop me,” said Jim.
“I can’t hold on,” said Uncle Zeno.
“Please don’t drop me,” Jim said. He scrabbled at the sides of the hole with his feet, trying to climb out.
When Uncle Zeno let go, Jim thought he was going to fall a long way, but his feet hit the ground after only a few inches. He found himself crouched in the bottom of the hole, his heart racing, both of his arms held over his head, his mouth open to yell — a position that made him feel a little silly once he realized he wasn’t falling. He lowered his arms to his side and slowly realized there was no reason to be afraid. The hole had more room than he had thought. He turned completely around in one direction, and then back the other way.
“What are you doing down there, Doc?” Uncle Zeno said from up above. Jim could tell that Uncle Zeno had dropped him on purpose.
“Nothing,” said Jim, looking up. Uncle Zeno’s face was dark, but his head was surrounded by a halo of blue light.
“What am I going to tell your Mama?”
“Tell her you put me down in a hole,” Jim said.
Uncle Zeno didn’t say anything for a moment. “We better not tell her that,” he said quietly.
Something in Uncle Zeno’s voice made Jim imagine his father sitting in the bottom of a hole much like this one. He imagined that his father was neither happy nor sad, just sitting there, waiting for something. It wasn’t necessarily a bad feeling; the hole wasn’t really an unpleasant place to be. It was just lonesome. Directly in front of his eyes, a rock stuck out of the dirt wall of the hole. He poked at the rock with a finger, thinking, I’m the only person who has ever seen this rock. I’m the only person who will ever see this rock.
“We better get you out of there, Doc,” Uncle Zeno said, lowering his arm into the hole.
Jim studied Uncle Zeno’s big hand dangling above him. When he jumped, Uncle Zeno firmly grabbed his wrist. He pulled Jim quickly into the bright daylight and set him on his feet beside the hole. The familiar world temporarily seemed strange to Jim, bright, more beautiful than he remembered. He was glad to be back.
Uncle Zeno made a big fuss brushing the dirt off of Jim’s overalls.
Jim was sorry he had made Uncle Zeno feel bad. “That was pretty funny,” he said.
“Humph,” said Uncle Zeno. “Your mama probably wouldn’t like knowing I dropped you down in a hole, would she?”
“No,” Jim agreed. “She probably wouldn’t.”
Not long after they got back on the road, they passed the sign marking the town limits of New Carpenter. Jim never tired of the moment when the state highway rolled in from the countryside and twisted down a little hill and changed itself into Main Street. Seeing the town all at once on a Saturday was like suddenly seeing the ocean: it made Jim breathe a little faster until he got used to it. Brick buildings leaned in on both sides of the street. Whole flocks of people scurried in and out of the stores and among the growling traffic. Down on Trade Street, farmers from all over the county parked their trucks shoulder to shoulder in a line four blocks long and hawked vegetables and apples and watermelons and roasting ears of corn. Sharps and would-be sharps wandered up and down among the farmers hoping to trade guns or knives or sell poor-looking dogs. At the far end of town, Trade and Main, city and country, collided and crossed in a honking, scary intersection, above which the tall white courthouse rose importantly from a large green lawn. On the lawn beneath the trees, tough-looking, young mill hands with the afternoon free gathered in their Saturday clothes. They laughed and argued and looked at people and occasionally fought. The whole thing was watched over by a gruff old policeman named Hague who carried a blackjack and blew his whistle and yelled at kids when they jaywalked. Aliceville always seemed a little quiet to Jim, almost like church, after he visited New Carpenter. As far as Jim was concerned, the uncles didn’t bring him here nearly often enough.