by Lisa Fowler
Mama says penning a middle name to a young’un is solely for the purpose of giving them fair warning as to how much trouble they’re in. Reckon you might say I’m in a heap of trouble, and it just ain’t right, I tell you. A girl ought to set a good example for her kin.
I stand, gently pushing Hazel back onto her cot, and smooth down the front of my dress. I don’t look any of the three of them in the eyes, but reckon I don’t need to. They know what’s coming, same as me.
“Yes, sir?”
I lean forward and peek through the door.
“Sit.”
He bobs his head toward the seat, and I notice right off that his face is as red as a rooster’s comb. His hair, the color of rotting teeth, is unusually mussed and unkempt.
“Yes, sir.”
I crawl out and plop down on the seat beside Daddy, but I don’t look his way. There’s no need. I feel his eyes, staring, looking me up and down.
Swallowing the hot liquid that’s rising over and over again in my throat, I grip the wooden seat so tight my fingertips go numb.
Silence rolls over the front of that wagon so thick that if I could put pencil to paper, I would draw it like the jagged side of a steep rocky canyon on a frosty January morning. And it’s not a silence I’ve felt before in my twelve years of living. It’s a separating, dividing sort of quiet, cold and harsh and unfeeling.
Daddy don’t like the silence—seeing as how he’s an orphan and all. From the way he tells it, there wasn’t a second of silence in that orphanage he grew up in. Mama said the only reason he wanted to have so many babies in the first place is because he wanted the house to always be full of racket and noise.
After what seems like hours, I’m reckoning he’s so caught up in the road and the stillness of it all, he’s forgot I’m here, so I swallow down to my toes and muster up the courage to speak.
“Daddy, I—”
“Hush.”
I shudder, look away fast, and clamp down on my tongue, making it impossible for words to leak out without me knowing.
Old Stump clomps along the dirt-packed road in the darkness at a slower pace than before, with nothing but the shining of the round full moon with its smeared colors of cabbage moths and snowy-white Easter lilies to light the way.
The air is strangely cool for mid-July, and my stomach’s rumbling louder than a pack of wild cats trying to claw their way out of a well. But it’s not from the lack of food. It’s from the fear of my daddy’s rebuke.
Daddy don’t say a word, and for the longest time we ride in a cumbersome, clumsy sort of silence. With nothing to do but count the bushes and trees along the road, my mind starts painting, mixing in the navies and sapphires and midnight blues that all slosh together in one bucket to make up the purply black of the night sky. Cobwebby trees stretch across the dirt road like the gnarly hands of an old man reaching up, praying to be snatched into another world by his maker. What I wouldn’t give for just one set of fancy paints and brushes and a scratchy ivory canvas so that I could paint the colors of the night.
The bumping up and down of the wagon jolts me back to the problem at hand. Snatching a look at Daddy, I feel a hot anger billowing from his nostrils, like a bull, warming up for a fight. He’s mad all right, but what he’s not got a clue of is that I’m fuming too, and keeping my anger shoved down inside is causing me a fierce displeasure. I don’t like the lying Daddy wants me to do, but what’s worse is that he’s making me lie in front of the triplets. And it don’t take more than just thinking about it to set my rage to boiling, ready to splatter out all over top of him.
Old Stump clomps along in a steady rhythm until there’s not hide nor hair of a store or a barn or even a house with a tiny light flickering somewhere off in the distance, and I know by the looks of things we’ve crossed over the county line from Chattanooga. Only Daddy knows where we’re headed from here, and he’s not telling.
Right about the time curiosity over what Daddy’s going to do to me for stirring up strife among the family takes over my mind, the devil takes over my mouth. With too many questions to swallow down and the anger inside of me boiling up, before I realize what’s happening words that I can’t suck back in—even if I was a mind to—come spewing from my mouth like seeds from a round purple grape.
“This wouldn’t be happening if Mama was here,” I blurt out. “She’d never let the triplets stand there listening to people yelling insults at you and hurling stones and bottles. Huh! She wouldn’t let me or the triplets help you tell your lies in the first place.”
I fold my arms across my chest sort of proud and haughty-like.
“There now. It’s out,” I say. “And I’m not sorry I said it.”
Expecting a bucketload of angry words, I hold my breath and wait, but Daddy don’t oblige. Matter of fact he don’t even so much as look in my direction.
Oh, he makes me mad!
“Filbert was out of that wagon faster than a starving fox in a hen house, and there was nothing I could say that would keep him from it,” I say, feeling bolder with each word blurted out. “There ain’t no way I can be in two places at once. Now maybe what I did was wrong but I made the decision to stay in the wagon with the other two, which is something you ought to have been doing by the way. But the way I see it you was too busy snatching up money, jumping around like a chimpanzee in a tree, and passing out lies to—”
“Whoa.”
He pulls hard on the reins and Old Stump clip-clops to a halt.
“Get down,” he whispers.
“Sir?”
“Get. Down.”
He speaks through clenched teeth. With one swift movement of an outstretched finger, he motions me off the wagon, pointing to the side of the road.
I jump off, plant my feet, and lock my knees, waiting for the rebuke to come.
Staring up into the dark Tennessee night, I glance at the whites of his eyes—well, one eye; the other’s purple. He just sits, staring off into the distance, once in a while snatching a look my way, but never so much as opening his mouth to speak.
From the corner of my eye I see the wagon wobble and there’s not a doubt in my mind what’s making it happen. Filbert, Macadamia, and Hazelnut are stirring, moving close as they can get to the front, so they can hear what’s about to take place.
Daddy clears his throat and opens his mouth like he’s fixing to speak, but then shuts it back before any words can leak out.
He leans over and spits on the ground.
Twice.
After shooting me one last annoyed sort of look, he turns and gapes straight ahead.
Then he does it. I mean, he really does it!
He slaps those long, thin leather reins against Old Stump’s backside, makes a kissing sound with his mouth, and takes off—leaving me standing on the dirt road, alone in the dark of the night.
Same way he left my mama the day he stole us away from her!
3
ALONE
Watching the back of that wagon skedaddle down the road, I feel the life being pulled clean out the bottom of my feet. Not a little at a time either, but all of a sudden, the same as if I was being sucked over the side of a mountain by a gigantic waterfall. My stomach’s billowing steamy water into my mouth that I’ve swallowed down so many times my throat’s beginning to ache.
I can’t believe Daddy left me.
Standing and watching the wagon disappear around the bend, I suddenly realize there’s nothing moving around out here. Not a breeze blowing the tree limbs or even a lightning bug moseying by. There’s not even any hungry barn owls swooping down and sweeping the meadows in search of a mouse or a rabbit or a lazy evening moth. You can bet your bottom dollar I’m not moving either. Matter of fact I’m not rightly sure I’m even breathing.
Like an extra nose on the face of a warthog, I stand here alone, not sure of the name of the one-horse town we just come from or the one Daddy’s got in his mind to go to next. I’m shivering so ’til I’m not sure if my legs will hold m
e much longer and I can’t say if the shivering’s from the chill of the night or from my nerves.
For two long years now we’ve been on the road running to warmer places in winter and cooler ones in the summer, but never, ever in any of my imaginings would I have thought that Daddy would leave me all alone.
What in the world will I do now? Why, my daddy must be out of his mind to go off and leave a young’un—even one he don’t much care for—alone in a strange place. And in the dark!
From the silence of it all I reckon the katydids and toads figure the human folk have moved on, because all of a sudden they commence holding a hollering contest from one side of the road to the other. Any other time I would have enjoyed their music; it would have reminded me of Kentucky.
Not now.
Not tonight.
Not when I’ve got so many of those same conflicting conflicts I had a few hours earlier eating away at the inside of my head.
I don’t know how long I stand here, alone, scared, and hungry, with the fierce distaste for my daddy boiling inside of me like a kettle of lye over an open fire. Just as I’m ready to turn and go to walking back the way we come, something in my gut tells me to snatch one last look down the road into the direction my daddy was headed.
Am I seeing right?
Is that what I think it is?
Bending over, looking squinty-eyed into the night, I cock my head from side to side. But when the glimmer from the moon catches the edge of those yellow wheels, it’s then that I know for sure. Daddy’s stopped that wagon just past the bend of the road and is sitting, waiting for me to catch up.
My shoulders sink, and I’m slouching worse than a one-armed man burdened down with a sack of coal. I sigh. More than anything in the world I want to run down that road and feel the dirt slap my toes through the holes in the bottom of my shoes. I want to jump up into that wagon, grab my daddy around the neck, and thank him for not leaving me. I want to kiss his cheeks and feel his nubby whiskers scratch my face. I want to bury my nose in the collar of his shirt and smell the scent of his sweat mixing with the witch hazel he’s slapped onto his neck to heal the cuts from earlier in the day.
But I don’t.
I can’t. So I do the only thing any other girl in my shoes would do, and that’s to take my own sweet time walking that dirt road. After all, I don’t want Daddy to think I’ve got the fear in me, or that I need him.
There’s not a turtle anywhere in the South with a dawdle any slower than mine.
When I get to the wagon, it’s clear Daddy’s no happier with me than he was when he tossed me out onto the road, and he don’t mince for words.
“Chestnut, I’m going to say this once, and I don’t want to have to ever say it again. Do you understand?”
The madder my daddy gets, the softer he talks, and right at this minute he’s practically whispering.
“Yes, sir,” I say, my teeth chattering—and not from the cold.
“Your mama’s not here and the reason for that doesn’t much matter, at least not now you’re still a child.” He looks me down and back again like he’s thinking, or maybe worried he’s going to say more than he wants me to hear. “Anyway,” he starts in again, “it isn’t going to change no matter how bad you or the triplets wish it so. Just give up on all this nonsense of us being together again, you hear? Give it up!”
He shakes his head, swallows hard, and stares out into the night.
“Selling this elixir and traveling from town to town is what we’re concentrating on now. It puts food in your stomach and shoes on your feet, however ragged and full of holes them shoes may be. As long as you live with me you’ll do what I say, when I say do it, and if that means you have to stretch the truth a bit … well …” His jaw muscles are jumping up and down so I know he’s clenching his teeth. “Well … so be it,” he says.
Swallowing hard and shivering more than once standing here in the dark of the night, I’m getting fussed at by a man who, even on the best of bad days, I don’t much care for. But I don’t disrespect him. I make sure my mouth stays closed.
“Chestnut Hill, you’re still just a little girl and you don’t know what’s best. I do. I’m your daddy and I make the decisions for this family. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” I mutter, with fists balled so tight I can feel my heartbeat in the tips of my fingers.
“When the trouble started, I told you to stay put inside that wagon. You didn’t, and what’s more you let your brother out too. You both could have been killed by that mob. What in the world were you thinking, girl?”
I want to holler at the top of my lungs: I was thinking of you, that’s what I was thinking! I was doing my best to try and save your sorry hide from taking a walloping, but I should have let them beat the tarnation plumb out of you.
But I don’t say it. Mama would never take kindly to me sassing Daddy.
“You weren’t thinking, were you?”
“No, sir, reckon not.”
I shrug and stare at the tops of my dust-covered shoes.
“Well, the next time you go against something I tell you and put yourself and those babies in harm’s way, I’ll lay a strap to your backside so hard you won’t sit for a week. And don’t you think for one minute that you’re too big for a whooping, you hear?”
He leans over and spits again.
“Yes, sir.”
I’m shivering and feeling sicker to my stomach than I’ve felt in a long time. Daddy’s never hit us, but just the threat of a strappin’s enough to cause my stomach to do a backwards flip. I don’t look at him, but I don’t need to. I feel his eyes staring a hole right through me, like he’s wishing I was somebody else’s child.
“Now,” he starts in again, so soft and quiet you’d think there was a newborn baby sleeping in back of that wagon of his. “Get up here, get into bed, and let this be the last we speak of what’s happened this evening, you hear? By morning we’ll be clean out of this territory with fresh prospects for the elixir and the show.”
“Yes, sir.”
I glance at him, expecting an offer to help me into the wagon, but instead he holds tight to the reins like he’s feared they’ll slip from his grip at any second. He stares down the road a piece.
I grab hold to the seat and pull myself up.
The wagon rocks from side to side, and I know it’s not my skinny bones doing the rocking. It’s those young’uns running away from the door before Daddy sees and swats them back to his way of thinking.
Stepping into the back of the wagon, I slam the door behind me, determined now more than ever to find my mama, get our family back on the straight and narrow, and maybe even take my daddy down a notch or two in the process.
I flop back on my cot, but I’m not ready for sleeping. In the darkness of that wagon, what I’m ready for is thinking. Before I bring myself to think too much though, Filbert commences whispering.
“Chestnut? You all right?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry Daddy’s mad at you.”
“Me too.”
“You’re a good sister.”
“Uh-huh.”
Hazel and Mac have already begun to suck in the cool night air in a rhythm that sounds like comfort.
An outraged tear trickles from the corner of my eye, rolling down my face and into my ear. Another one follows and I swipe it with one angry jab, wishing with all of my being I was a hitter. Then again, there’s nothing to hit inside an old worn-out circus wagon, so even the thought of it seems useless.
“You thinkin’ about Mama?” Filbert asks.
“Yep.”
There’s a long pause, and then he lets out a long, slow breath.
That’s the last we said there in the blackness of the night with only the moon and stars shining through the cracks. But it was only the beginning of my thinking.
Before I can blink more than a half a dozen times, I hear all of them breathing the rhythm of the sleeping.
Not me.
Not when there’s so much planning to be done.
4
A PUZZLEMENT
I’ve spent the last two long hot weeks with these babies, packed tighter than Prince Albert in a can in back of this wagon, thinking and planning on putting our family back together. Matter of fact, about all I can do is think while we’re bumping along rocky dirt roads, stopping just long enough to build a fire, mix up some food, and let Daddy sleep a wink or two every now and then.
“Filbert, do you ever think about Mama?” I ask, pulling my sketch papers and pencil from under my cot.
“Huh?”
He grunts, not even putting aside his book to look at me.
“Mama. Do you ever think about her and what we’d be doing right now if we were still at home?”
“Nope.”
I stare at the top of his head, wishing I could see his face. With Filbert’s propensity for stretching the truth, it’d be easier to know if he was being honest if I could look into his eyes.
“I do. I think of her all the time.”
“What?” He peers at me from over his picture book, his face all wrinkled and looking perturbed.
“You know, think about Mama and what we’d be doing if we were at home.” I sigh and lean back on my cot. “I’d be sitting at that pine table Daddy built, watching Mama cook. I can smell it now: fried chicken, green beans, corn bread. Mmm.”
“Mama never cooked that stuff,” Hazel says, looking up from her Buster Brown coloring book.
“She cooked all that and more; you were just too young to remember. I’d have my paper and pencils in front of me and I’d be drawing: pictures of her cooking; pictures of Daddy coming home from work all dirty and gritty and sweaty; and pictures of the hills and hollers around the mines.”
“Would you draw pictures of me?” Hazel asks.
“No, silly,” Mac lisps, slinging his yo-yo straight out, barely missing the side of Hazel’s head. “She’d draw a picture of a goat and say it was you! Baaaaah!”
Hazel jumps from the floor, runs over, and slugs Mac on the arm. He drops his yo-yo and draws back a fist.
“Hey! Hey! Hey! You know what Daddy says about fighting, Mac. No hitting girls—ever—for any reason.”