House of Earth

by Woody Guthrie

  Tike and Ella May would have given their last spoonful of flour or of sugar or their last stitch of clothes to certain of their people who had always seemed to work, to save, to fight, to really try. Certain others, they knew, would only “blow the money on some fancy duds” or “scatter it by the handfuls in all of the whorehouses” or “get rid of it hangin’ around that corner drugstore tryin’ to work up a hunk of nooky,” or worse yet, “go shovel it away on them old cards or dice or dominoes!”

  And still it was harder than this to see through. The ways and the laws that people used to judge one another did not lie in any one certain mold. The people knew the other people. They knew the all good, the half good, the three-fourths good, and the nine-tenths good. One would have six faults and no good. Another had three good habits and four bad ones. Another had eleven sins and twelve virtues. This one, two vices and one streak of honesty. The next one, fair in some things and no-account in others. The next one, all right when the wind is in the east. The next one was a good man while his wife done his thinking. Another one was a hard worker but trailed loose women. And others had their own mixtures of the good and the bad and their makeup was as well known to the others as the times to plow and to plant and to cut and to gather. There were a few people around who fought, drank, gambled, fornicated, trifled, told lies, and cheated, but were so outright and so honest about it that Tike and Ella May either one would lend them their last coin or feed them or shelter them at any time, because they paid them back sooner than lots of the ones that claimed to be so holy.

  And so the year went around. The wheel of time rolled down the road of troubles. They had the same things hit them day after day. The same cows bawled to be milked every sunset, and bawled to be milked again at every sunrise.

  The same cackles of the chickens and the same crowing of the roosters, and even if the chickens died or were told to be killed, Tike’s ear could not tell very much of a difference in their cackling and their crowing. Each grunt of his old mama and papa hogs he knew like a blood relative. Every little sniff and every little squeal of the baby pigs Ella May knew like children in her nursery. The chirps and the squawks, the sounds of little baby turkeys growing up, she knew, because she had carried each on into the house and talked as she kept him down in a box of rags to look him over, to see if he was all right, just to have some company. It was the same with the new dogs, puppies, the older ones running away, the shes that got in heat and lifted their tails, ran, with all of the adult hes chasing after. The same, too, with the young colts, calves, rabbits, dens of baby snakes, ants, nests of naked little newborn mice, and drunk-looking baby birds born somewhere on the flat ground under a weed, and the same way with the families of scratching cats, and kittens that make noises like a waterlogged organ. Jobs to do at the same time every day. Rocks carried and thrown into mudholes. Wire fences patched up and put back together again. Windbreaks for the animals. Fences to stop stickery weeds and fences to cause the snow to drift away from the livestock. The going. The coming. The naked hours somewhere in the sun. Naked nights hit in the bed from the wind. Laughs. Tears. Fun. Worry. Misery. Company. Lonesomeness. The wheeling of the moon and the stars, whirling of planets, howls of the brave coyotes and wolves, and the tracks of cougar, lion, and panther in the cow pen. Blistered hands. Calluses. Back bending. Back breaking. Aching muscles. Sweat. Toothache. Headache. Stings. Things that hurt and things that feel good. This is how the year went. This is where it went. These things, and not a clock on a wall, make a year.

  Ella May washed her supper dishes and threw the pan of dishwater out the west door in the dark. She felt the sting of the bite of the cold wind on her wet hands. “You know, Mister Tike, I’m always glad to see the first cold snap of weather come. It kills out all of my old mean biting flies. Most of them are already gone, I mean the ones outside, but there are still a few smart-aleck ones that live in here by the fire and hang on till the very first freeze.” She rubbed her hands together in a towel to warm them up, and asked him, “Need a good work hand, to help you paste that paper over those old cracks?” She smiled and stood by the table. “Say?”

  Tike grunted an answer. His mind had been wandering around the world nine times. “Hmm? Oh. Ahhh. Work hand? Naww. Lady, you set down there on the bed or somewhere and get you some rest. Set down before you fall down.” Then he stood back and looked at the newly pasted pages that he had put on to cover the cracks. “Gad dern my soul to hell, anyhow, and tie up th’ tails of forty tomcats! I’ve put enough flour and water on these walls to feed and raise and fatten six kids to butcher!”

  “Only way on earth to ever keep out that old dust and wind, though, at least that I know of.” She started to walk toward him to help him.

  “I told you to set down before you fall down!”

  “But I can help.”

  “You’re so big an’ round and so fat with that baby in your belly that if you fall down, Lady, you’ll get started rolling and I never would be able to catch you. Set down. Make yourself miserable.” He pointed his paste broom at a chair. “You know as well as I know why I’m tellin’ you. Set down.”

  “But. Tike.”

  “Don’t But Tike me! You know why. That baby was supposed to of been here four or five days back! It’s liable to come jumpin’ out across here with a tractor in each hand any minute now! He’s comin’ so late that he’ll be grown up before he’s even born! Set down. I don’t want your blood on my hands. Not now. Not just when I’m on th’ start of gettin’ to be a big landowner. Set down. If he falls out there in the middle of th’ floor he’ll break his head!” Tike wore a faded old blue shirt stuck down into a pair of khaki work pants, and his same pair of heavy work shoes that he had on a year ago, only he had nailed new rubber tread soles onto them and kept them good and full of grease. “Just about through with this contract anyhow. Don’t need no work hands. Guess I’ll hafta print me a big sign an’ put it up: No Work Hands Wanted So Keep To Hell On Traveling!” As he waved his whisk broom in the air he threw drops of the paste, which lit on Ella May’s face, on her eyelid, and some in her hair.

  “Tiiike. You old clumsy thing you. Donnn’t. Will you or will you not ever learn how to be careful?” The springs of the bed screeched with rust when she sat down to rub her face with her hands. “Old mean thing.”

  “Turn th’ radio on. Play me some music.” He nodded at her. “I got a damned tender soul. I need perty music jumpin’ down all aroun’ me here while I’m a doin’ my work.”

  Ella May lifted the weight of the baby in her stomach and went over across the room to connect the naked ends of two wires that would make the radio play. She grunted in a good-humored way as she walked, “Oho hum hummy hummy hummm.”

  “No! You set back down over yonder on th’ bed! I’ll tie them two wires together!” Tike splashed more paste about the room as he waved his broom. “Oughta be able to take a reg’lar bath in some awful good music ever’ day an’ ever night for a hunderd an’ seventy days.”

  As she sat back down on the edge of the bed, she worked at the knobs of the radio. It was an old one, in a green metal box, and the loudspeaker stood up on top of the box like an air ventilator on a ship. As Tike hooked the two wires together, Ella May looked at the speaker and worked the handles. Tike had put the radio close to the head of the bed so “Lady could just lay there with ’er baby in ’er arms an’ lissen.”

  “I don’t see what ever did possess you to go and give that much for such an old junk heap as this, anyway,” she scolded at him in her soft way as he spit on his fingers and smoothed down a little hump in his wallpaper. “Why did you ever?”

  “Goshamighty whizzers, Lady, that ain’t too much to pay for a good radio. An’ that’s a good one. I seen an ad in a big magazine that said so. Company speaks mighty well of it.”

  “Yes. I should suppose the company would. I would too if it made me a millionaire and rich.” She held her right hand up over her left breast and bent over with a stitch of sharp pain. W
hen she saw that Tike’s eyes followed her, she lifted herself up straight again. This little sharp cutting pain had been over her left breast now, coming and going, for months. In her own mind she traced it back to that day when she had carried the cream cans across the yard, and Tike had punched her with the sharp bone of his elbow. It had been there ever since, but not so bad that she had ever told him about it. Once or twice he had seen her bent over with the hurt and he had asked her what it was. She passed it off as just some kind of a regular female pain that all women have when their breasts swell at their monthly period. His eyes were faster and sharper in these days since the baby was in her, and he had got to where he did not trust what she said anymore about pains because she always moved her shoulders and passed it off as nothing. He kept his eyes on her until she felt nervous.

  “’Smatter over there?” he asked.

  “Oh, just little stitches in my muscles here and there. When I get bent over, I can’t hardly get straightened back up again. Go on with your project. Don’t worry so much about me.”

  “Just what in the hell else would you say I oughta worry about then, Missy?” He sounded like he held her in suspicion.

  “Your work. Ahhh. Ding bust this dad-ratted old dod-rotted radio to the south pole and back, anyhow! Tike! Did you fix those wires together good?”

  “Good as they’d go. Why?”

  “Ohhh. I don’t know.” With her fingers she combed her hair back out of her eyes. “All I can get out of the old thing is just this crazy rattling sound and this infernal screeching. And I do honestly believe to my soul that this is going to force my brain to just stop and quit functioning completely!” In spite of the fact that she did try to sound humorous and fresh, there was a tired drag in every word that she spoke. “Could it be that the wires up on top of the house are knocked down or something? Something. I don’t know. It’s just not working. Maybe it just doesn’t like me.”

  “Ya gotta talk good to it.”

  “I guess it’s just got it in for me.”

  “Treat it nice. Talk to it like dice. You gotta talk all kinds a super spucious words to it.”

  “Super spucious? What kind of words are those?” There was a hollow look about her jaws as she studied the radio with all of her mind. “Super what did you call them?”

  “Spucious. Spucious. Don’t you know? You mean to set there an’ tell me that you’re a great big grown-up womern, old enough to have a baby in your gut, an’ you still don’t savvy what super spucious is?” He put on an expression of great self-importance and held his elbows out to his sides like a family butler.

  “Well, then, sir, if you happen to be so familiar with matters of this nature, then in all probability your efforts and not mine will meet with the most success in our maneuvers to coax this machine to play,” she said, bowing to him. And there was a flirty look in her eyes as she said again, “Maybe you could tell me just what about your super spucious words are. And just where about did you learn them?”

  “Grampaw Hamlin taught ’em to me, one at a time on th’ shortest day of ever’ year way down in a slick-off canyon of th’ Cap Rock cliff.” He marched over with his brush in his hand and a proud look.

  “And sir. Just what are those words?”

  “Words you use to make all kinds a forces an’ powers come down to one little spot an’ go to work for you an’ do whatever you tell ’em to. Brings all of th’ invisible forces down to work on th’ visible ones.”

  “My. My. My.”

  “It’s th’ words of th’ dead civilizations an’ th’ civilizations that ain’t even been born yet. You gotta know just how to go about it. Brings th’ past an’ the’ future down to work on th’ present.”

  “The past and the future down to work on the present?”

  “I don’t say nothin’ super spucious but once.”

  “Well. Do say.”

  “Yeahh. Perty handy thing to know. You know.”

  “Well, I should daily remark.”

  “Ahhhh. Here. Let me have that knob. I’ll get some noise out of that contraption. Here. You hold my wallpaper brush. I don’t want to gum the thing all up with paste. Ahhhemmm. Now, let me see. Let me see. Now, let me see.”

  “Go ahead and see. I’m not hindering you, am I?”

  “Where’s that set of directions that come with this outfit?”

  “They are right there in that little book hanging on that nail.” She pointed.

  Tike reached out his hand to get the book of instructions. “Ha.”

  “I thought you said that you said you were going to use your super spucious magic to make it play. You don’t need that little old book of directions. Call your powers down to go to work on it.” She looked at him with a tired, sad smile.

  “Hogey hogey hogey hogey hogey, dogey dogey dogey dogey, hogey hogey hogey riz a riz a radio, play! Play! Play!” He held both hands over his head and danced around, kicking one foot against the linoleum. As his toe struck down against the dry, rotted, flaky thin worn linoleum, a cold shiver went through his whole body, and his face and his skin became wet with a chilly sweat. As he whirled and said his magic words, the floor, the walls, the whole house moved and trembled, and the loose dust made a loud noise as it sifted down behind the dry wallpapers. He kept dancing. He smiled. His eyes turned into lights and were half shut as he danced. For a few moments his wrists ached and his fingers burned and he felt a craving to take his two fists and beat the whole house down, take his two feet and kick the odd pieces out into the night. He knew that he could do it. Not a plank nor a board on the whole house could have stood up under one good crash of his shoulder, and most of them he could have rammed through with his bare fist. He was thinking to himself, “I’ll do it. I’ll do it. I’ll scatter its carcass all over these upper plains! This measly shack cain’t keep my woman an’ my baby on a ball an’ chain.”

  Ella leaned her head back against the fancywork of the iron bed rail. She heard the house shake, the wallpaper crack some more, the dust sift down and down and on and down and down. She smiled. She felt Tike’s craving to crash it in. She sat there, leaned her head back, and smiled, but there was a vacant spot, an empty place somewhere there across her face. Tike saw that, and this was what made him have his raging desire to just shut his eyes and double up his fists and just whale away and batter the whole thing down into a trash pile and then strike a match to that. He still danced. He whirled. He jigged. He waved his arms above his head, and fanned them at his sides, he whooped, yelled, and made gobbling noises with his hand over his mouth. It was not that he wanted to dance, it was not that he enjoyed it nor got any fun out of it, but it was because it was keeping that last little trace of Ella’s smile on her face there. And it seemed that he had got started and just could not stop. He hollered himself hoarse, and worked his clothes into a suds of sweat. He cursed the angels, the devils, the spooks, the saints, the tides, the seasons, and everything else above and below the earth, but all of these he cursed to himself under his breath. He cried out his super spucious words, “Oolagy, dooley, moola katolly, hobity hotine, hobity hotine!” Then he waved his fingers into the speaker of the radio and said, “Plazay! Plazay! Plazay!”

  Ella looked into the speaker.

  “Play!”

  She kept looking.

  “Play!”

  “Pulllay!” she helped him out.

  Tike fell down tired on the floor and hugged her legs as she sat down on the bed. He put his head sideways into her lap and breathed like a tired dog after a swift chase, his clothing soaked with large spots of perspiration as he rubbed his hard hand over his wet cheek. He was so out of wind that he could hardly talk, but finally did manage to say, “Playyy!”

  Ella May’s voice sounded thin and a long ways off. “Play.”

  A hum, a scratchy rasping blur of noise, a rattle, a whine, a clicking, clacking, several high and low zooms, far-off rumbles, sobs, sighs, and then a terrible clatter came from the mouth of the loudspeaker. This was the only
answer that it made to all of Tike’s sweating and working and dancing.

  “Guess,” he said between gasps of air, “guess, guess, maybe th’ battery’s run down.”

  She felt his hair and cheek and chin with the ends of her fingers and asked, “Didn’t old Grandpa Hamlin teach you any super spucious words about how to charge batteries again?”

  “Yeah. He did.” He shook his head in her lap and pulled his shoes up under him. “He showed me some. Works ever’ time.”

  “Then why don’t you get up there and say them and dance them and yell them and scream them and charge these old batteries again?” she asked.

  “Well. Ah. Just to tell you a fact for a fact”—he panted as he thought—“ah, th’ super spucious words an’ the dancin’ that it’d take to recharge them old dead batteries is, ah, well, perty hard. Fact is, ahhh, I believe, believe it’d be a little easier just to carry them batteries into town an’ th’ man run ’em up again on his reg’lar machine.”

  It was after several minutes of stillness in the room that Ella said, “You know it was certainly nice of Blanche to stay here with me these last few days.”

  Tike had rolled a cigarette, spilled loose tobacco in the wrinkles of his pants, and turned to face the room and to lean his head back against her knee. She smelled his khaki pants and blue shirt filled with his sour sweat, mixed in with the smoke that he blew from his mouth as the cigarette hung down from his lips. She heard him blow smoke without moving the cigarette, and heard him say, “Yeah … Really sure ’nuff was. You’re a dern daggone fool, though, Elly, to let her leave you alla these four or five hours. Kid was to poke its head out right now, shucks, I wouldn’t know which a way to jump. Where did you say that she went?”