Jim the Boy

by Tony Earley

  Whitey walked out of town and turned onto the faint track that led through the woods to the tenant house where Mama had lived with Jim’s daddy. Jim, who had been following about fifty yards back, stopped at the edge of the woods and wondered what Whitey was doing. The track led solely to the tenant house. Beyond the tenant house lay only open fields, and, across the fields, the river. Mama, of course, spoke of the tenant house as if it were a site in the Holy Land, but nobody else spoke of it at all. Why would Whitey go there?

  As Jim stepped off of the road, he noticed another set of footprints leading into the woods. These prints were smaller than the ones made by Whitey’s big shoes. Jim began to feel a little scared. Who did the other set of footprints belong to? What if Whitey was up to no good? What if he was a bank robber meeting his gang at the empty house? Jim cautiously entered the woods, careful to avoid the open track. He didn’t want anyone to see his footprints later. Whitey was out of sight somewhere ahead. Every few steps Jim stopped and listened and peered through the trees. The limbs of small trees reached out and scratched at him as he passed, and the leaves frozen beneath the snow crackled underneath his feet.

  He reached the edge of the clearing where the tenant house sat just as Whitey stepped onto the porch. Small cedar trees poked up through the snow. Beyond the old house, the smooth, white fields glowed peacefully. Whitey knocked on the door. When the door creaked open on its rusty hinges, Jim knew, without knowing how he knew, that Mama was inside. Mama had made the other set of footprints in the snow. Mama was waiting in the tenant house for Whitey.

  Jim understood that he was witnessing a transaction so important and secret that he was not supposed to see it. Once he had peeked through Mama’s keyhole and watched her bathe — an act that made him so ashamed he could not look her in the eye for days. That’s how he felt now, only he could not make himself stop watching. He squatted and sat motionless in the woods and tried to breathe quietly, like a rabbit waiting for a hunter to pass.

  Whitey stepped forward, but stopped without passing through the doorway. His voice reached Jim as a low mumble without discernible words. He held out his arms as if puzzled or imploring, and asked what Jim recognized as a question. Jim didn’t hear Mama reply, but what she said made Whitey turn away from the door and step to the edge of the porch, facing away from the house.

  With his back to the door, Whitey talked to Mama a long time. He gestured with his hands and stopped occasionally to listen. Once he looked up at the sky and shook his head. Finally he raised both hands as if asking Mama to be quiet. He removed a white handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit, shook it open, and spread it onto the porch floor. He knelt, still facing away from the door, placing his right knee on the handkerchief. Jim’s breath turned jagged in his throat. A sweat bloomed all over his body, even though he had been cold the moment before.

  Whitey was proposing to Mama.

  Mama spoke sharply from inside the house —Jim heard her for the first time — and Whitey stood up quickly. He took his hat off and put it back on. He reached into his jacket pocket and removed something small. Still facing away from the door he extended his arm behind him and implored Mama to take it. Jim held his breath, waiting to see if Mama would step forward.

  But Mama stayed inside the tenant house.

  Whitey’s arm eventually sank to his side as if he had been holding up a great weight. Without speaking again, he stepped off of the porch and walked across the clearing and up the track into the woods.

  After Whitey had gone away, Jim stood still and waited for Mama to come out of the house. When she finally appeared, Jim’s heart pounded as if she were a deer or a spirit. She carefully closed the door, turned, and looked down at the handkerchief Whitey had left on the porch. She picked it up, held it briefly to her nose, and put it into her coat pocket.

  Mama had walked only a few steps into the clearing when her legs collapsed as if something heavy had fallen on top of her. She sat down in the snow and raised her hands to her face. Jim felt two warm tears roll down his cheeks. He held his arms toward Mama and squeezed his hands open and shut as if trying to pull her toward him, but he was afraid to leave his hiding place in the woods.

  Mama finally dried her eyes on her coat sleeve and climbed to her feet. She squeezed her coat closed at the neck and trudged across the clearing toward the path home. At the edge of the woods, she turned and looked back toward the tenant house. Jim heard her say his name, but knew she wasn’t talking to him.

  BOOK V

  Quiet Days

  A Game of Catch

  THE LAST week of March, a slow, cold rain fell until water stood ankle-deep on the playground. Each day that week was wetter than the day before, and it seemed to Jim that only the trees and the buildings kept the low sky from dragging on the ground like a sheet. The roads grew so muddy that the bus from Lynn’s Mountain could not make it to Aliceville. School seemed empty without Penn and the mountain boys there. Although it was time for baseball season, Jim didn’t even bother taking his glove when he climbed the hill to school.

  Nor did the rain let up the first week in April. Every morning Uncle Zeno stepped onto the back porch, looked up at the sky, and shook his head. The river reddened and swelled and climbed toward the tops of its banks. On the days the rain fell hardest, it lapped out into the lowest bottoms, where it curled in slow, searching eddies over the unfamiliar ground. On the days the rain slackened, it slid back out of the fields, leaving behind slicks of trash and wide, shallow lakes that from a distance looked very deep.

  Mama and the uncles grew cross with the weather and then with each other. Uncle Al could not get into the fields to begin the spring planting. He sat around the house and the store and glowered. One day he got so mad that he went back to his house and slept all afternoon. The mules, fat from a long winter of corn and rest, stood sopping and still in the muck of the barn lot, their ears flat, their heads down as if ashamed.

  Uncle Zeno could not run the gristmill because the high creek would flood the mill house if he opened the race. He brought the emery wheel into the kitchen and ground knives and axes until they were sharp enough to shave the hair off of his arm. Mama complained about the uncles being underfoot and tracking mud into the house. She complained about the noise Uncle Zeno made with the emery wheel; she said she would rather have dull knives than listen to it. She said it was good weather for catching a sickness, and felt Jim’s forehead with her palm almost every time he came into the room, which made Jim cross, too.

  Only Uncle Coran did not seem to mind the rain. When bad weather drove the farmers out of the fields, it inevitably herded them into the store. After dinner on most rainy days, the store filled up with farmers who loafed around most of the afternoon, waiting for the clouds to break and the fields to dry, drinking Coca-Colas and smoking until a great blue cloud hovered just beneath the roof. The days Uncle Coran hated most were the ones where everybody was out in the fields working and he sat for hours around the cotton gin and the store without anyone to talk to. Unlike everyone else, Uncle Coran seemed to get happier and happier the longer the rain fell.

  Finally, on the second Saturday in April, a hazy, tentative sun, the color of an old quarter, appeared behind the thinning clouds. The store was busy that morning, but emptied quickly when the sky began to brighten. After dinner Jim sat with the uncles in the empty store, where the uncles talked about President Roosevelt until Jim began to fall asleep. Roosevelt was an interesting subject only when the odd Republican happened by. Jim wandered outside without any real destination, where he threw rocks into mud holes, but without any real pleasure. Everywhere he stepped the ground sucked at his shoes.

  Around two o’clock he began to listen for the Carolina Moon. The Carolina Moon was so sleek and modern that it seemed to come from some beautiful future Jim longed to see. It blasted through Aliceville without noticeably slowing. Its only acknowledgment that the town even existed was a single admonishing shout of its whistle at the crossing.
Jim listened for the train, but all he could hear in the distance was the river racing smoothly through the woods, back inside its banks now, but still full and high.

  When the train finally approached, Jim could tell by the sound that it was going to stop in town. He ran up onto the porch of the store and stuck his head inside the door. The uncles looked up. “The Carolina Moon is stopping,” Jim said. The uncles stared at Jim for a moment and then stood as a group, almost as if he were a minister and had asked them to sing a hymn.

  Jim got to the track just in time to see the great, gleaming locomotive, streamlined and fast-looking like a bullet, its steam engine breathing mightily, edge past the station and stop. The last of its silver passenger cars rolled to a standstill abreast of the station. Pete walked out onto the platform, looked at Jim, and motioned importantly with the flat part of his hand for Jim to stand back. Up the track two men in overalls climbed down out of the cab and crawled underneath the locomotive. One of the men carried a toolbox.

  The uncles walked up beside Jim. Their reflections were distorted in the shiny sides of the passenger car. They had short, stumpy bodies and long, pointed heads, which made Jim smile. The windows reflected only the sky above Aliceville, which kept him from seeing inside the train. Ragged scraps of cloud slid from window to window to window, moving toward the front of the train as if looking for seats.

  “Hey, Pete,” Uncle Zeno said. “What’s wrong with the Moon?”

  “Ran over a cow,” Pete said. “Get a good look at her. She ain’t going to be here long.”

  “I heard she can run seventy-five miles an hour,” said Uncle Coran. “How fast can she run, Pete?”

  “I don’t know for sure,” Pete said. “Fast enough to get you there and back before you know you’re gone, I guess.”

  “Right,” said Uncle Coran. “Seventy-five miles an hour.”

  A door opened near the rear of the car, and a black-suited conductor with a thick gold watch chain stretched across his vest grabbed onto the handrail and swung himself down to the ground. Without looking at Pete or the uncles or Jim, he started for the head of the train, walking uneasily on the sloping gravel of the roadbed to avoid the soggy ground. A mud hole filled with red water stood in the low place just off the grade. When the conductor got to the locomotive, he leaned over and looked in between two of the wheels.

  “That’s the head man right there,” said Uncle Zeno.

  Jim heard somebody sneaking up behind him and turned to see Penn. Penn’s eyes were bright, and his face was shining and red, as if he had been running. Jim grabbed Penn’s hand and pumped it hard. Penn hadn’t been to school in over a week.

  “Hey, Penn,” Jim said, maybe a little louder than he meant to.

  “Hey, Jim” said Penn. “And Mr. McBride and Mr. McBride and Mr. McBride.” Unlike Jim, Penn never forgot to be polite.

  “Penn,” said Uncle Al.

  “Howdy,” said Uncle Coran.

  “Mr. Carson,” said Uncle Zeno, looking down at Penn’s legs, which were caked in thick mud up to his waist. “How’re you today?”

  “Pretty good,” said Penn. “I’m kind of tired, though. Daddy and I got stuck in the mud coming down here, and I had to get out and push. My britches are so stiff I can hardly walk.”

  “Guess what?” Jim said. “The Moon ran over a cow.”

  “Why didn’t the cow jump over it?” Penn said.

  He laughed and whacked Jim on the arm. Jim whacked him back. They stood and rubbed their arms and grinned at each other.

  “It’s been too wet to play ball,” Jim said. “With y’all stuck up on the mountain we wouldn’t have had enough to play a game anyway.”

  “Sorry about that,” Penn said. “Maybe the road will dry out and we can get a game in this week.”

  Down at the far end of the train the conductor stood up and started back toward the station. When he drew abreast of Jim and Penn, he stopped and looked at them and motioned for them to come closer.

  “I need to speak to you gentlemen,” he said.

  Jim pointed at his chest. “Us?”

  “You,” said the conductor.

  Jim and Penn looked at each other and started slowly forward. They jumped when they got to the mud hole below the grade. Penn didn’t quite clear it and came down in the edge of the water with a splash. They walked hesitantly toward the conductor, who looked very important. As the conductor of the Carolina Moon, he was easily the most important person Jim had ever been around. He had white hair and a fine, merry face. He motioned the boys closer, leaned over, and put his hands on his knees. He looked soberly into Jim’s face and then into Penn’s. Jim thought maybe they had done something wrong, but couldn’t figure out what it could be.

  “Guess who’s sitting in that car right behind me?” the conductor said.

  “Who?” said Jim and Penn.

  The conductor leaned closer and whispered, “Ty Cobb.”

  Jim’s mouth dropped open. Penn squinted and rubbed his forehead as if he hadn’t understood what he had heard.

  “The Georgia Peach,” said the conductor. “I thought you boys might like to know.”

  “Boy, did we ever!” Penn said, extending his hand. “Thank you.”

  “Thank that heifer we ran over,” said the conductor, shaking Penn’s hand. Then he shook Jim’s hand, too.

  He drew a gold watch big as a clock out of his vest pocket and studied it. He looked at Jim and Penn and winked. “Late, late, late,” he said. He tucked the watch back into his pocket. He grabbed hold of the rail beside the high steps and lightly swung himself up. He held on to the rail, leaned out away from the car, and looked toward the head of the train.

  Jim jumped over the mud hole and ran over to the uncles. Mr. Carson had joined them. Penn hesitated at the mud hole, jumped, and missed clearing it again.

  “What did he say, Jim?” asked Uncle Al.

  Jim opened his mouth but found that he could not speak. He closed his eyes and gulped a mouthful of air. He could hear somebody yelling inside his head, Ty Cobb! Ty Cobb! Ty Cobb!

  Penn shoved Jim impatiently. “JIM,” he said.

  “Ty Cobb,” Jim said. “He said Ty Cobb is on the train!”

  The uncles’ heads jerked up as if pulled by invisible strings. Ty Cobb, because he was from Georgia, had always been one of the uncles’ favorite players.

  “Ty Cobb?” said Uncle Zeno.

  “In that car right there,” Penn said, pointing.

  Uncle Al whistled. “Boy,” he said. “Boy.”

  “Ty Cobb, huh?” said Uncle Coran. He winked at Jim and Penn and tilted his head toward the station. “Ty Cobb was the best ballplayer there ever was,” he said loudly.

  “Humph,” said Pete from the platform. “Babe Ruth is the best ballplayer there ever was.” Pete was from Ohio. He was a big Yankees fan, the only one in Aliceville, so far as Jim knew.

  “Babe Ruth was born in Baltimore, you know,” Uncle Coran said.

  “So?” asked Pete. “What does that prove?”

  “Well, Maryland is below the Mason-Dixon line,” Uncle Coran said.

  “And Maryland was a slave state,” added Uncle Al.

  Pete looked disgusted. “You’re trying to tell me that Babe Ruth is a southerner?” he said.

  “Shoot, you ought to be able to tell that by the way he can hit,” said Uncle Zeno.

  The uncles started to grin. Even Mr. Carson smiled behind his black beard.

  “All right,” Pete said. “I can see which way this train’s headed. And this is where I’m going to get off.”

  Uncle Coran winked again.

  “Ty Cobb,” said Uncle Zeno. He looked at the conductor and stepped forward, stopping at the edge of the mud hole. “Excuse me, sir,” he said. “I understand that Ty Cobb is on this train.”

  “Yes, sir, he is,” said the conductor.

  “Where’s he headed?”

  “We’re taking him to Atlanta,” the conductor said. “After that I couldn’t tell you.�
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  “Could you tell these boys here what Mr. Cobb is like?”

  The conductor looked at Jim and Penn and considered a minute.

  “Mr. Cobb,” he said carefully, “is a paying passenger.”

  “Hmm,” Uncle Zeno said slowly. He took off his hat and scratched his head. “By any chance could these two boys here get on the train for just a minute and maybe meet Mr. Cobb?”

  “Oh, please,” said Jim.

  “Please, please, please,” said Penn.

  “I’m sorry, boys,” said the conductor. “I can’t allow that.”

  “Just for a minute?” Jim said.

  “Only paying passengers are allowed on the train.”

  “Well, all right,” said Uncle Zeno, nodding. “We understand. That makes sense. How about if you were to ask Mr. Cobb for an autograph for these two boys?”

  The conductor bit his lower lip and then shook his head again.

  “Mr. Cobb strikes me as the kind of gentleman who would prefer not to be disturbed,” he said. “I think it would be best if we didn’t disturb him.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Pete said from the platform. “I’m telling you, Cobb was dirty.”

  “I wouldn’t say that too loudly if I were you,” said the conductor.

  Jim stared up at the train, at the clouds moving across the windows. He could not believe he was so close to Ty Cobb. Ty Cobb was only ten yards away from where he stood. Jim felt his insides quiver; he felt his heart thump. He looked anxiously toward the head of the train. He knew that when the men crawled out from underneath the locomotive, the Carolina Moon would leave and take Ty Cobb with it. It would never stop in Aliceville again. Already Jim could feel how empty the town would be.

  Uncle Zeno suddenly clapped his hands together.

  “I know what,” he said. “Jim, run get your ball and glove.”

  Jim took off for the house, running as hard as he could. Mud and water flew up around his feet with each step. He ran down Depot Street, crossed Uncle Zeno’s backyard, leapt onto the porch, and barged into the kitchen.