His hard work came over him by spells and his lazy dreaming came over him to cure his tired muscles. He was a dreaming man with a dreaming land around him, and a man of ideas and of visions as big, as many, as wild, and as orderly as the stars of the big dark night around him. His hands were large, knotty, and big boned, skin like leather, and the signs of his thirty-three years of salty sweat were carved in his wrinkles and veins. His hands were scarred, covered with old gashes, the calluses, cuts, burns, blisters that come from winning and losing and carrying a heavy load.
Ella May was thirty-three years old, the same age as Tike. She was small, solid of wind and limb, solid on her two feet, and a fast worker. She was a woman to move and to move fast and to always be on the move. Her black hair dropped down below her shoulders and her skin was the color of windburn. She woke Tike up out of his dreams two or three times a day and scolded him to keep moving. She seemed to be made out of the same stuff that movement itself is made of. She was energy going somewhere to work. Power going through the world for her purpose. Her two hands hurt and ached and moved with a nervous pain when there was no work to be done.
Tike ran back from the mailbox waving a brown envelope in the wind. “’S come! Come! Looky! Hey! Elly Mayyy!” He skidded his shoe soles on the hard ground as he ran up into the yard. “Lady!”
The ground around the house was worn down smooth, packed hard from footprints, packed still harder from the rains, and packed still harder from the soapy wash water that had been thrown out from tubs and buckets. A soapy coat of whitish wax was on top of the dirt in the yard, and it had soaked down several inches into the earth at some spots. The strong smell of acids and lyes came up to meet Ella May’s nose as she carried two heavy empty twenty-gallon cream cans across the yard.
“Peeewwweee.” She frowned up toward the sun, then across the cream cans at Tike, then back at the house. “Stinking old hole.”
“Look.” Tike put the envelope into her hand. “Won’t be stinky long.”
“Why? What’s going to change it so quick all at once? Hmmm?” She looked down at the letter. “Hmmmm. United States Department of Agriculture. Mmmmm. Come on. We’ve got four more cream cans to carry from the windmill. I’ve been washing them out.”
“Look inside.” He followed her to the mill and rested his chin on her shoulder. “Inside.”
“Grab yourself two cream cans, big boy.”
“Look at th’ letter.”
“I’m not going to stop my work to read no letter from nobody, especially from no old Department of Agriculture. Besides, my hands are all wet. Get those two cans there and help me to put them over on that old bench close to the kitchen window.”
“Kitchen window? We ain’t even got no kitchen.” Tike caught hold of the handles of two of the cans and carried them along at her side. “Kitchen. Bull shit.”
“I make out like it’s my kitchen.” She bent down at the shoulders under the weight of the cans. “Close as we’ll ever get to one, anyhow.” A little sigh of tired sadness was in her voice. Her words died down and the only sound was that of their shoe soles against the hard earth, and over all a cry that is always in these winds. “Whewww.”
“Heavy? Lady?” He smiled along at her side and kept his eye on the letter in her apron pocket.
The wind was stiff enough to lift her dress up above her knees.
“You quit that looking at me, Mister Man.”
“Ha, ha.”
“You can see that I’ve got my hands full of these old cream cans. I can’t help it. I can’t pull it down.”
“Free show. Free show,” Tike sang out to the whole world as the wind showed him the nakedness of her thighs.
“You mean old thing, you.”
“Hey, cows. Horses. Pugs. Piggeeee. Free show. Hey.”
“Mean. Ornery.”
“Hyeeah, Shep. Hyeah, Ring. Chick, chick, chick, chick, chickeeee. Kitty, kitty, kitty, meeeooowww. Meeeooowww. Blow, Mister Wind! I married me a wife, and she don’t even want me to see her legs! Blow!” He dug his right elbow into her left breast.
“Tike.”
“Blowww!”
“Tike! Stop. Silly. Nitwit.”
“Blowwww!” He rattled his two cans as he lifted them up onto the bench. In order to be polite, he reached to take hers and to set them up for her, but she steered out of his reach.
“You’re downright vulgar. You’re filthy-minded. You’re just about the meanest, orneriest, no-accountest one man that I ever could pick out to marry! Looking at me that a way. Teasing me. That’s just what you are. An old mean teaser. Quit that! I’ll set my own cans on the bench.” She lifted her cans.
“Lady.” The devil of hell was in his grin.
“Don’t. Don’t you try to lady me.” Her face changed from a half smile into a deep and tender hurt, a hurt that was older, and a hurt that was bigger than her own self. “This whole house here is just like that old rotten fell-down bench there. That old screen it’s going to just dry up and blow to smithereens one of these days.”
“Let it blow.” Tike held a dry face.
“The wood in this whole window here is so rotten that it won’t hold a nail anymore.” Tears swept somewhere into her eyes as she bit her upper lip and sobbed, “I tried to tack the screen on better to keep those old biting flies out, and they just kept coming on in, because the wood was so rotten that the tacks fell out in less than twenty minutes.”
Tike’s face was sad for a second, but before she turned her eyes toward him, he slapped himself in the face with the back of his hand, in a way that always made him smile, glad or sad. “Let it be rotten, Lady.” He put his hands on his hips and took a step backward, and stood looking the whole house over. “Guess it’s got a right to be rotten if it wants to be rotten, Lady. Goldern whizzers an’ little jackrabbits! Look how many families of kids that little ole shack has suckled up from pups. I’d be all rickety an’ bowlegged, an’ bent over, an’ sagged down, an’ petered out, an’ swayed in my middle, too, if I’d stood in one little spot like this little ole shack has, an’ stood there for fifty-two years. Let it rot. Rot! Rot down! Fall down! Sway in! Keel over! You little ole rotten piss soaked bastard, you! Fall!” His voice changed from one of good fun into words of raging terror. “Die! Fall! Rot!”
“I just hate it.” She stepped backward and stood close up against him. “I work my hands and fingers down to the bones, Tike, but I can’t make it any cleaner. It gets dirtier every day.”
Tike’s hand felt the nipples of her breast as he kissed her on the neck from behind and chewed her gold earrings between his teeth. His fingers rubbed her breasts, then rubbed her stomach as he pulled the letter out of her apron pocket. “Read th’ little letter?”
“Hmh? Just look at those poor old rotted-out boards. You can actually see them rot and fall day after day.” She leaned back against his belt buckle.
He put his arms around her and squeezed her breasts soft and easy in his hands. He held his chin on her right shoulder and smelled the skin of her neck and her hair as they both stood there and looked.
“Department of Agriculture.” She read on the outside.
“Uh-hmm.”
“Why. A little book. Let’s see. Farmer’s Bulletin Number Seventeen Hundred. And Twenty. Mm-hmm.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“The Use of Adobe or Sun Dried Brick for Farm Building.” A smile shone through her tears.
“Yes, Lady.” He felt her breasts warmer under his hands.
“A picture of a house built out of adobe. All covered over with nice colored stucco. Pretty. Well, here’s all kinds of drawings, charts, diagrams, showing just about everything in the world about it.”
“How to build it from th’ cellar up. Free material. Just take a lot of labor an’ backbendin’,” he said. Then a smile was in his soul. “Cost me a whole big nickel, that book did.”
“Adobe. Or Sun-Dried Brick. For Farm Building.” She flipped into the pages and spoke a few slow words. “
It is fireproof. It is sweatproof. It does not take skilled labor. It is windproof. It can’t be eaten up by termites.”
“Wahooo!”
“It is warm in cold weather. It is cool in hot weather. It is easy to keep fresh and clean. Several of the oldest houses in the country are built out of earth.” She looked at the picture of the nice little house and flowers on the front of the book. “All very well. Very, very well. But.”
“But?” he said in a tough way. “But?”
“But. Just one or two buts.” She pooched her lips as her eyes dropped down along the ground. “You see that stuff there, that soil there under your feet?”
“Sure.” Tike looked down. “I see it. ’Bout it?”
“That is the but.”
“The but? Which but? Ain’t no buts to what that book there says. That’s a U.S. Gover’ment book, an’ it’s got th’ seal right there, there in that lower left-hand corner! What’s wrong with this soil here under my foot? It’s as hard as ’dobey already!”
“But. But. But. It just don’t happen to be your land.” She tried hard and took a good bit of time to get her words out. Her voice sounded dry and raspy, nervous. “See, mister?”
Tike’s hand rubbed his eye, then his forehead, then his hair, then the back of his neck, and his fingers pulled at the tip of his ear as he said, “’At’s th’ holdup.”
“A house”—her voice rose—“of earth.”
Tike only listened. His throat was so tight that no words could get out.
“A house of earth. And not an inch of earth to build it on.” There was a quiver, a tremble, and a shake in her body as she scraped her shoe sole against the ground. “Oooo, yes,” she said in a way that made fun of them both, of the whole farm, mocked the old cowshed, shamed the iron water tank, made fun of all the houses that lay within her sight. “Yesssss. We could build us up a mighty nice house of earth, if we could only get our hands on a piece of land. But. Well. That’s where the mule throwed Tony.”
“That’s where th’ mule”—he looked toward the sky, then down at the toe of his shoe—“throwed Tony.”
She turned herself into a preacher, pacing up and down, back and forth, in front of Tike. She held her hands against her breasts, then waved them about, beat her fists in the wind, and spoke in a loud scream. “Why has there got to be always something to knock you down? Why is this country full of things that you can’t see, things that beat you down, kick you down, throw you around, and kill out your hope? Why is it that just as fast as I hope for some little something or other, that some kind of crazy thievery always, always, always cuts me down? I’ll not be treated any such way as this any longer, not one inch longer. Not one ounce longer, not one second longer. I never did in my whole life ask for one whit more than I needed. I never did ask to own, nor to rule, nor to control the lands nor the lives of other people. I never did crave anything except a decent chance to work, and a decent place to live, and a decent, honest life. Why can’t we, Tike? Tell me. Why? Why can’t we own enough land to keep us busy on? Why can’t we own enough land to exist on, to work on, and to live on like human beings? Why can’t we?”
Tike sat down in the sun and crossed his feet under him. He dug into the soapy dishwater dirt and said, “I don’t know, Lady. People are just dog-eat-dog. They lie on one another, cheat one another, run and sneak and hide and count and cheat, and cheat, and then cheat some more. I always did wonder. I don’t know. It’s just dog-eat-dog. That’s all I know.”
She sat down in front of him and put her face down into his lap. And he felt the wet tears again on her cheeks. And she sniffed and asked him, “Why has it just got to be dog-eat-dog? Why can’t we live so as to let other people live? Why can’t we work so as to let other folks work? Dog-eat-dog! Dog-eat-dog! I’m sick and I’m tired, and I’m sick at my belly, and sick in my soul with this dog-eat-dog!”
“No sicker’n me, Lady. But don’t jump on me. I didn’t start it. I cain’t put no stop to it. Not just me by myself.” He held the back of her head in his hands.
“Oh. I know. I don’t really mean that.” She breathed her warm breath against his overalls as she sat facing him.
“Mean what?”
“Mean that you caused everybody to be so thieving and so low-down in their ways. I don’t think that you caused it by yourself. I don’t think that I caused it by myself, either. But I just think that both of us are really to blame for it.”
“Us? Me? You?”
“Yes.” She shook her head as he played with her hair. “I do. I really do.”
“Hmmm.”
“We’re to blame because we let them steal,” she told him.
“Let them? We caused ’em to steal?”
“Yes. We caused them to steal. Penny at a time. Nickel at a time. Dime. A quarter. A dollar. We were easygoing. We were good-natured. We didn’t want money just for the sake of having money. We didn’t want other folks’ money if it meant that they had to do without. We smiled across their counters a penny at a time. We smiled in through their cages a nickel at a time. We handed a quarter out our front door. We handed them money along the street. We signed our names on their old papers. We didn’t want money, so we didn’t steal money, and we spoiled them, we petted them, and we humored them. We let them steal from us. We knew that they were hooking us. We knew it. We knew when they cheated us out of every single little red cent. We knew. We knew when they jacked up their prices. We knew when they cut down on the price of our work. We knew that. We knew they were stealing. We taught them to steal. We let them. We let them think that they could cheat us because we are just plain old common everyday people. They got the habit.”
“They really got the habit,” Tike said.
“Like dope. Like whiskey. Like tobacco. Like snuff. Like morphine or opium or old smoke of some kind. They got the regular habit of taking us for damned old silly fools,” she said.
“You said a cuss word, Elly.”
“I’ll say worse than that before this thing is over with!”
“Naaa. Naaa. No more of that there cussin’ outta you, now. I ain’t goin’ to set here an’ listen to a woman of mine carry on in no such a way when she never did a cuss word in her whole life before.”
“You’ll hear plenty.”
“I don’t know why, Lady, never would know why, I don’t s’pose. But them there cuss words just don’t fit so good into your mouth. Me, it’s all right for me to cuss. My old mouth has a little bit of ever’thing in it, anyhow. But no siree, not you. You’re not goin’ to lose your head an’ start out to fightin’ folks by cuss words. I’ll not let you. I’ll slap your jaws.”
Ella May only shook her curls in his lap.
“You always could fight better by sayin’ nice words, anyhow, Lady. I don’t know how to tell you, but when I lose my nut an’ go to cussin’ out an’ blowin’ my top, seems like my words just get all out somewhere in th’ wind, an’ then they get lost, somehow. But you always did talk with more sense, somehow. Seems like that when you say somethin’, somehow or another, it always makes sense, an’ it always stays said. Cuts ’em deeper th’n my old loose flyin’ cuss words.”
“Cuts who?” She lifted her head and shook her hair back out of her face, and bit her lip as she tried to smile. “Who?”
“I don’t know. All of them cheaters an’ stealers you’re talkin’ about.”
“I’m not talking about just any one certain man or woman, Tike. I’m just talking about greed. Just plain old greed.”
“Yeah. I know. Them greedy ones,” he said.
And she said, “No. No. You know, Tike—ah, it may sound funny. But I think that the people that are greedy, well, they believe that it’s right to be greedy. They’ve got a hope, a dream, a vision, inside of them just like I’ve, ah, we’ve got in us. And in a way it’s pitiful, but it’s not really their fault.”
“Hmm?”
“No more than, say, a bad disease was to break out, like some kind of a fever, or some kind of a pla
gue, and all of us would take it, all of us would get it. Some would have it very light, some would have it sort of, well, sort of medium. Others would have it harder and worse, and some would naturally have it bad. Some of us would lose our heads, and some would lose our hands, and some would lose our senses with the fever.”
“Yeah. But who would be to blame for a plague? Cain’t nobody start no fever nor a thing like a plague. Could they, Lady?”
“Filth causes diseases to eat people up.”
“Yeah.”
“And ignorance is the cause of people’s filth.”
“Yeah—but—”
“Don’t but me. And ignorance is caused by your greed.”
“My greed? You mean, ah, me? My greed? You mean that me, my greed caused this farm to be filthy? I didn’t make it filthy. If it was mine, I’d clean th’ damn thing up slicker’n a new hat.”
She sat for a bit and looked out past his shoulder. “I feel the same way. I don’t know. But you can’t put your heart into anything if it’s not your own.”
“Shore cain’t.”
“I don’t know. I never did know. But it looks like to me that we could get together and pass some laws that would give everybody, everybody enough of a piece of land to raise up a house on.”
“Everybody would just go right straight and sell it to get some money to gamble with or to get drunk on, or to fuck with,” he told her. “Gamble. Drink. Fuck.”
“Should be fixed, though, to where if you went and sold your piece of land, then it went back into the hands of the Government, and not some old mean miserly money counter,” she said.
“If th’ Gover’ment was to pass out pieces of land right today, the banks would have it all back in two months.” He laughed.
“And if that happened”—she tilted her head—“then the Government should take it away from the banks and pass it out all over again. What do we pay them for? Fishing.”
House of Earth Page 4