Everyone moved slowly. The soldier turned Caroline loose.
Put that down lad said the one in charge. We’ll not hurt your mother.
Put the gun down Ross said Caroline. These are thieves. They’ll do anything. You shoot one you’ll have to shoot them all and they’d git us sure. Put it down.
The one in command said to Caroline We’re authorized to sustain ourselves.
There’re ways to sustain without taking from women and children.
No ma’am there’re not. Can you ask the lad to put his gun down?
Put the gun down Ross.
Ross lowered the gun slowly. His legs were shaking so badly he could hardly stand. Caroline walked to him took him by the arm and led him inside. Before dusk she came back out went to the kitchen and brought food back to the house.
Before eating their supper several soldiers walked to the graveyard and called to others who came and talked and laughed about Born ded. Bone did one said.
They left at sunup after Caroline and the children went to the field.
After the war Vera came home for good and Leon Herndon began to call on her. Walker Caroline Vera and Ross were at the corn crib shucking corn when he came the last time. William the youngest was lying in a small deep wagon on a quilt. It was late in the afternoon. Vera strode to Leon and together they sat on the front porch for a while. Suddenly Leon rode out of the yard and into the road still whipping the horse. The others at the corn crib stopped what they were doing and watched.
Vera stayed on the porch until much later when she went to the kitchen for supper.
That night deep in the night Walker came out onto the back steps for a smoke. Someone else got up inside went out onto the front porch then walked around the corner to the back steps. It was Vera. There was no moon but the sky was clear and the stars were out.
Papa is that you? You scared me.
What are you doing up?
I couldn’t sleep. What are you doing up?
I wanted a smoke. I couldn’t sleep either. Here. Here’s some mosquito oil. Sit down. What did Leon want?
That’s why I can’t sleep. Vera rubbed oil on her hands then ankles forehead and neck. I keep seeing Seaton. I know Seaton died thinking of me. He said he’d be thinking of me if it happened and I can’t rid myself of him. And I think about the baby dead out there with the field hand and those others. I don’t want to rid myself of Seaton somehow but well Leon asked me to marry him and I said no I suppose.
You suppose?
I started talking about Seaton and he
You talked about Seaton when Leon asked you to marry him?
I mentioned how I felt and how I still think about Seaton.
I don’t blame Leon for driving off.
But Papa Seaton’s there so strong.
Seaton’s dead. You need marrying.
But I That’s why I can’t sleep Papa. Vera started crying. She put her hands to her face and leaned forward so that her head touched her knees. The smoke from Walker’s pipe hung above them in the darkness. Walker put his arm across Vera’s back and drew her toward him. She put her head on his lap. He rubbed her back. They stayed that way for a long time before she sat back up wiping below her eyes with her hands. Walker pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her. She spoke after sniffing her voice heavy from crying. Why can’t you sleep Papa?
I just can’t.
A year later Bertha Finch was buried joining Thomas Pittman and the others in the graveyard. Bertha was Seaton’s mother the grandmother of the stillborn infant and had often come from Raleigh to visit the infant’s grave and decided that she too wanted to be buried in the country.
“… and Walker told me too,” said Thomas Pittman to Bertha Finch, “about picking up a hot coal one time, thinking it was a piece of chocolate. Julius, his brother, was standing there with him in front of the hearth, and had just kicked him or something about the time Walker saw what he thought was a piece of chocolate laying on the floor and picked it up. Well, you know, a piece of chocolate was a major occurrence. He picked it up and instead of yelling—now, remember it was hot—instead of yelling, he said, ‘Julius, you want a piece of chocolate candy?’ Julius says, ‘Yes’ and Walker hands it to him, and Julius has it on the way to his mouth before he realizes it’s burning him like nobody’s business. And it burnt him, burnt Julius, Walker said—brought a blister, but it didn’t leave any sign at all on Walker. He used to tell that story every once in a while, and if Julius was around, Julius would show you the scar on his finger, then he’d try to kick Walker in the butt, and they’d do a little dance, trying to get at each other.”
“They all did seem to be a right relaxed and hard-working bunch, and then Vera was so sweet on my Seaton.”
“I liked them a good bit. Oh, and them kids. What about Ross? He was always throwing rocks at chickens.”
“Ross was full of mischief. When Vera and Seaton were married he….”
BLISS
We stopped about once every hour to let the dogs out. We stop at the same side roads every year. It’s a good way to notice how things change because every now and then a side road will be gone, with something built there, and we’ll have to find a new side road.
We stopped in South Carolina just as the sun was coming up. We were on a side road of dark South Carolina soil—dirty sand. Mr. Copeland’s car was a little ways up in front of us. Noralee was taking care of Taylor.
Thatcher and I leaned back against the front of the car, watching the edge of the blazing sun appear above distant trees.
“Do you suppose Meredith and Mark will be with us next year?” I said.
“I don’t know. If they get leave.”
Meredith and Mark were standing in the edge of the woods, watching the dogs. Meredith had a tennis ball he was throwing into the woods, and the dogs would fetch it. They are beautiful white pointers, with brown or black spots and freckles: Nick, Sam, Joe, and Sailor. Joe belongs to Mark and the rest are Mr. Copeland’s.
“Well, I hope they’ll have lots of leave time,” I said.
“What?” said Noralee, walking up. She’s fifteen, wearing glasses—in that awkward stage of puberty and gangly legs which will soon change into fluid beauty and grace.
“Meredith and Mark. I hope they’ll be able to make the trip with us next year.”
“I think it’s stupid they’re going in the first place.”
“It’s not stupid,” said Thatcher. “How would you feel without the United States Army?”
“It would be all right with me,” said Noralee.
“No, it wouldn’t. That’s stupid, Noralee. This day and age you don’t have an army somebody will take you over.”
“Not the Vietnamese,” I said.
“Yeah, but you don’t ever know. Nobody knew Hitler was such a big deal when he started out. You can’t take the chance. You got to have a military arm.”
“Why ain’t you going then?” asked Noralee.
“You know why I ain’t going. Taylor. And I’m too old.”
“Load ‘em up,” called Mr. Copeland.
NORALEE
I love babies. I love to baby-sit. But I can’t stand riding anywhere in the car with Papa. He reads all the signs out loud for one thing and then when we stop somewhere he tries to be cute with the waitress, and bores her to death.
These dogs get on my nerves, too. They sniff my crotch. But Bliss lets Taylor ride with me and I love taking care of him. He’s real easy to get along with.
There’s only one place so far that I won’t go back to babysit. The Parkers. They’ve got three children and their house is the biggest mess I’ve ever seen and they don’t even have sheets on the beds. And they didn’t pay me nothing hardly.
My favorite thing about Florida is Silver Springs. The rest of it is b-o-r-i-n-g. It’s just hunt, hunt, hunt, dead birds, dead birds, dead birds. And the way they take their guts out and everything is gross. The cats eat it.
We’ve got one teac
her at school, Mr. Cresston, who talks about Vietnam. But the principal called us in the auditorium and told about being in Korea in the Marines and made a speech about what America stands for. I had Mr. Cresston’s class right after that and he said there were two sides to the coin. Right before we left for vacation somebody said Mr. Cresston himself got called to the principal’s office.
Meredith said he wanted to go in the Marines because it might be his only chance to get in a war and he didn’t want to miss it. Mark wants to fly a jet.
What Papa would die if he knew about is J. W. Potts. J. W. is this black guy at school. He plays halfback on the football team and everybody loves him. He sat with me on the bus—I’m a cheerleader—on the last two road trips and he’s really neat. The problem will come if he actually asks me for a date. I don’t know what I’ll do. I’ll probably say no. But in a way I’d like to say yes because he’s so neat.
We’ve got a game coming up at Grove City right after we get back and I’ve got to think up some stuff to talk about if he sits with me again.
One thing I like about him is he’s a Christian and doesn’t make a big deal out of it. He doesn’t curse around me, but I’ve heard him curse, so a neat thing I told him about on the bus trip was Papa’s “funk” speech to Meredith and Mark. I figured it’d be a neat thing to tell him, kind of bold, so I told him.
Papa had Meredith and Mark sitting out on the root one day. I was probably six or seven. I went out the front door instead of the back and then sneaked around the garage where they couldn’t see me, came up on the far side, close enough to where I could hear. I thought all the time he was talking about “funking,” but it was the other word. Papa don’t always say his words clear. Later, when I told Bliss that I’d heard Papa explain about “funk,” she spelled the real word and told me about it.
Papa was walking back and forth while he talked to Meredith and Mark. “When you start noticing animals doing it, it’s time you know what to call it. Some people call it screwing, some call it having intercourse, capitating, making love, or funking”—I thought he said.
“Mark, your mama ain’t likely to explain it to you. Our mama wouldn’t ever mention about nothing like that. Now, your mama might talk around it once in a while when you’re maybe forty or fifty.”
“I already know about it,” said Meredith.
I sat down and leaned my back against the garage. This was going to be interesting, I figured.
Papa told all this about his Papa telling him. Then he talked about peckers, about God giving all the male animals peckers and all the female animals snatches and that it was the best feeling thing in the world when you do it but if you did it to somebody you won’t married to you could get a disease and your pecker might fall off. I remember wondering what might happen to my snatch.
I didn’t tell it all to J. W, of course. I of course didn’t say pecker or snatch. And I didn’t tell him about Mama talking to me about having my period, which Tamantha Phillips’s mother forgot to do.
When I told Bliss about it the first time, about Papa telling Meredith and Mark, I still thought it was “funk” because I’d never seen it written down then.
But Papa never set me down on the root and told me all about it. I wish he would sometime. He set me down and talked to me about lying and cheating though.
The thing I ain’t told J. W. about is how everybody in my family says “nigger” except Mama. I think he would understand it. He said he hears it at football games. We talked about that some on the bus.
THATCHER
Meredith had this little nigger buddy, City Lewis, that used to hang out at Bailey’s Esso, and Meredith talked him into a basketball game one time, except instead of three or four guys, City recruited eight or nine.
They ended up down at the gym which was the old wooden gym they tore down two or three years ago. That gym wasn’t hardly any bigger than the basketball court itself, and it had one bench up against the wall which went all the way around, and there was a big coal stove in the corner.
What was so weird about it was that there hadn’t ever been any niggers in the gym except Pete the janitor and then suddenly one Saturday morning here was Meredith and Mark and Ted and Michael and Jerry and the nine niggers.
This was after me and Bliss were married because I remember asking Bliss if she wanted to ride down there with me to watch. She had something else to do.
They had built a fire in the coal stove in the corner and were doing lay-ups when I got there. City and them had three cheerleaders dressed in green-and-white cheerleader outfits, with pom-poms, and they had some spectators along—two mothers who had driven them all down there, and four or five more. It was real cold, but I remember City had two or three players who were barefooted. He said they were the Tigers; what did Meredith’s team want to be?
Meredith said the Floatplanes.
They started playing and the cheerleaders started cheering and their four reserve players lined up on the side. When a player got tired he’d get at the end of the line and the one at the front would go in the game.
I can’t remember what the score was but it was real cold, I know that, so every time-out or break or something, somebody shoveled more coal into that stove.
The thing was that somebody had used the stovepipe as a target for coal bricks and dented it and knocked it out of kilter so that it leaked smoke where two sections of pipe fitted together. To fix it somebody would have to sit on somebody’s shoulders and twist the loose section of pipe until it fitted tight. The game was about half over, the stove was red-hot, glowing, and smoke from the leak covered the ceiling—and was dropping lower and lower. The only light came from high-up windows and was turning a dark gold color.
Ted and Mike helped Mark up onto Meredith’s shoulders and gave him a coat so that he could put his hands in the sleeves and not burn his hands on the pipe. He was going to fit the loose sections back tight so the leaking would stop. I’m just sitting there watching, waiting for the worse. I was at the back door, in case Mr. Thompson came in the front.
Mark had his hands in the sleeves like he was putting the jacket on backwards, up on Meredith’s shoulders, the sleeves drooping over his hands. About the time Mark got hold of the pipe, Meredith touched his knee against the red-hot stove and jerked and hollered; Meredith lost his balance, and it looked like when you hold a baseball bat on the tips of your fingers but it falls anyway. Meredith tried to get back under him but it was too late.
When Mark fell he grabbed and took the whole pipe down with him. Only one section of pipe was left in the stove, and the black smoke roared out—like out of a train.
Everybody started doing different things then. Meredith got the shovel, knocked open the stove door and started shoveling out red-hot coals and throwing them out the gym door.
I stood up.
Black smoke was rolling down the back wall and the big black cloud was lowering. Meredith was dropping hot coals out of the shovel, onto the floor and Mark was kicking them out the door.
Somebody got a fire extinguisher from somewhere and started spraying in through the door on the hot coals. That made more smoke than ever come out the short pipe and the stove door.
You could see coal dust dropping from the air like it was sifting through somebody’s hands. The bottom of the cloud was just about at everybody’s heads and Meredith’s face was as black as City’s.
There was no choice but to leave. You couldn’t see the goals. We just closed the door and left. I looked back at the gym, and smoke was seeping out through cracks in the boards and out the top corners of the door in two little black upward-flowing rivers, and sort of billowing out under the roof overhang.
But the worse part of the whole thing was that we walked to Mike’s backyard to wash off our faces and Mrs. Tillman, their neighbor, saw it and told Mike’s mother we’d been dressed up like niggers, and Mike’s mother called Papa.
I was lucky, because I didn’t go straight home, but Meredith and Mark did,
and Papa met them in the yard, blessed them out for changing races, and told Meredith he was going to give him a whipping but he wouldn’t say when. I think he waited about two weeks.
MARK
Meredith used to brag about getting Rhonda hot. We’d go frog-gigging and talk. One night, it’s his turn to gig, my turn to row. Four bullfrogs are in the tow sack in the floor of the rowboat. Meredith sits in the bow, hands cupped over his mouth, answering a bullfrog. I’m in the stern, paddling toward the sound of the frog on the bank.
“Hurry up,” he whispers over his shoulder. He picks up a three-pronged gig with one hand, a flashlight with his other hand.
I drag the paddle on one side and then the other, steering the boat toward the bellowing. Meredith stands slowly and hoists the gig like it’s a spear.
The frog croaks from the bank straight off the bow. Meredith clicks on the flashlight, finds the frog sitting on the muddy bank just above water level, looking shiny wet, and sleepy. He holds the light on him and slowly extends the gig toward him as we approach the bank. Just before the boat touches land, he stabs the gig through the frog and into the mud. The frog croaks a muffled croak and kicks twice. Meredith gives the gig a quick swing up, lifting the frog into the air, lets the gig handle slide down through his hand, places the flashlight between his legs, almost loses his balance, pulls the frog from the gig, drops the gig into the boat, grabs the light and shines it on the frog, which he’s holding for me to see. “He’s a nice one. The biggest one yet,” he says.
“Not as big as the last one.”
The Floatplane Notebooks Page 7