“I’ll do the milking,” I said. A thousand times I’d seen how much easier it was to do a job myself than to get Moody to do it.
“Ain’t no cow going to tell me what I can or can’t do,” Moody said. When Moody started getting mad it was like something in his blood turned to poison. He got madder because he was already mad. His blood got so crazy he couldn’t control hisself.
“Go on to the house,” I said. “I’ll milk the cow.”
“Are you telling me what to do?” Moody said. He shook the two-by-four like he wanted to swing it at my head. He was only three years older than me, but he’d always acted like he was my boss.
“I’m telling you what you don’t have to do,” I said. I didn’t want to set him off even worse.
“Nobody tells me what to do,” Moody said. “Certainly not my chickenshit little brother.”
Rather than stepping back further I stepped sideways. Moody turned to face me. His eyes looked yellow as somebody’s with jaunders.
“Ain’t no use for you to get riled up,” I said.
I kept my eyes level with his but didn’t say nothing else. I figured he might calm down if I didn’t argue anymore. Moody couldn’t take any kind of criticism. He couldn’t stand for anybody to disagree with him or suggest anything. When he was feeling good he could be nice as anybody in the world. When he was feeling in charge he could be as accommodating as you would want. We would work together for days and even weeks as long as nothing set him off, long as he stayed sober. But in recent months he’d been going off to Gap Creek and Chestnut Springs more and more and getting drunk almost every week.
Moody knowed Mama disapproved of him getting drunk, and that made him afraid. And when he was afraid he was in the wrong, that set him off even worse.
Moody kept his eyes level with mine and didn’t say nothing else, and I didn’t say nothing either. I thought maybe things was going to be all right. His eyes started fluttering the way they did sometimes when he was confused, when he was bad hungover and couldn’t remember what he was going to say. Suddenly he spun around and hit the cow on the flank with the two-by-four.
The cow had gone back to eating from her box and jerked with surprise and shook her head.
“Stop!” I hollered.
“I’m going to teach this cow some religion,” Moody said. He swung the wood again and hit her near the base of the tail. The cow jumped forward but was restrained by the rope tied to her collar from a post of the barn.
“Stop it!” I hollered.
“You just try,” Moody said. He raised the piece and hit the cow on the shoulder. She swung around and bawled and slammed her flank against the barn wall. Her eye was wide with surprise and fear as she twisted to see what was happening. As the cow banged her rump against the wall again, her tail went up and she begun to empty her bowels. A scared cow will always relieve her bowels quicker than you can think.
Moody raised the board again and hit her on the back of the neck.
“You coward!” I hollered. He turned and swung the two-by-four at me and I jerked back. The end of the wood glanced off my forearm. The bone above my wrist felt like it had been touched by hot iron. Anger flashed through me in a bolt of electric current. I’d tried to keep calm before.
I stepped back toward the feed room. There was a lot of dusty harness on the wall, and some shovels and hoes and pitchforks leaned against the wall. I grabbed the first handle I could reach. It was a pitchfork with four big prongs. Moody was lunging toward me, but when he seen the fork he stopped. I held the tines out toward him.
“You’re stupid as a cow,” he said.
I was out of breath and I didn’t answer. I was so mad the air rasped in my throat. Moody swung at the pitchfork like he was sword-fighting. I jabbed at him and stepped back. He swung the two-by-four against the tines and I jerked away.
“You’re stupider than you look,” he said.
“You are the brains of the family,” I said.
Long as I was holding the pitchfork he couldn’t reach me. All he could do was try to knock the fork out of my hands with the two-by-four. He swung hard, and I seen the thing to do was drive the pitchfork at him before he completed the swing. I sidestepped and lunged forward. He seen the tines coming at his neck before he finished the swing, and he jumped back. But the stool was behind him and he tripped.
As Moody fell backward into the straw and dirt, I rushed over to him and raised the pitchfork, aiming right at his face. How easy it would be to drive the tines into his nose and cheeks. But I paused for a second. I didn’t want to hurt Moody that bad. I didn’t want to kill him. I wanted to knock him out so he’d cool off before he come to again.
But I didn’t see how I could knock him out with the points of the pitchfork. I’d have to turn the fork around and hit him with the handle. It was the only thing I could do.
“Moody!” somebody shouted. It was Mama. Her and Aunt Florrie and Fay had come running to see what the commotion was about. I guess they’d heard Moody and me hollering or the cow bawling. All of them stood there watching me holding the pitchfork aimed at Moody’s head.
I was going to say Moody started it. And I was going to turn the pitchfork around and hit him with the handle. But in that moment Moody had time to recover and jab me in the knee with the two-by-four. He didn’t have time to swing, only to shove the end against my leg bone. My knee went out from under me like a knife folding. I tried to stop my fall, but it was too late.
“Stop that!” Mama hollered as I fell. The pain from the knee washed through me to the tips of my toes and fingers, and I went down on the hard ground. As I fell Moody rolled to the side. Bracing hisself on the ground, he kicked out and hit me in the belly. He kicked me in the crotch and in the belly. He kicked me in the shoulder and in the face.
Mama was hollering for him to stop. Her and Aunt Florrie took hold of me, and Moody kicked me again. I was weak from pain as I tried to wrench free.
Moody had got to his feet still holding the two-by-four. He was sweating and out of breath. He still had the yellow look in his eye. I expected him to swing at me again with the two-by-four. Instead he shifted the board to his left hand and reached into his pocket with his right. Out come his switchblade knife, and the blade flashed open. It was the knife he carried down to Gap Creek and Chestnut Springs. Moody was knowed as a knife fighter.
“Put that thing down,” Mama said.
Moody waved the knife like it was the end of a whip. “Now let’s see who’s giving orders,” he said, and thrust the blade forward. Because they was holding me, I couldn’t get away. The tip of the blade hit my chest but didn’t go in deep. I twisted and flung Mama’s and Aunt Florrie’s hands off my shoulders. They fell back and I jumped sideways, still holding the pitchfork, and I turned it so I gripped it by the collar just above the tines.
Moody held the two-by-four in his left hand and parried with the knife in his right. I jabbed at him with the end of the fork handle. Moody swung at the handle with the two-by-four. Before he could recover from the swing, I slammed him on the side of the head with the handle.
Moody was not quite knocked out, but he was addled. He took a step back with his knees bent, and he dropped the two-by-four and brought his left hand to his forehead. Then he staggered back another step and shook his head.
“I’ll kill …” he said, but stopped like somebody that couldn’t remember what he wanted to say. He was so dazed all the anger went out of him. I thought his knees was going to buckle, but they didn’t. He rolled his eyes and acted like he couldn’t hardly see. He walked a few steps one way, and then he walked in another direction. I kept my eyes on the knife, but he didn’t raise it again.
Moody stumbled over a clump of weeds and had to catch hisself. “Chickenshit,” he said. He took a few steps toward the barn and then stopped. Putting his left hand to his forehead like he was trying to think, he started walking toward the pines at the edge of the pasture. He tripped and staggered a few times on brush and stubbl
e but kept going.
Mama and Aunt Florrie watched Moody until he disappeared into the pine thicket.
“You’re bleeding,” Fay said to me. I looked at my chest and seen a spot of blood on my shirt.
Aunt Florrie unbuttoned my shirt. There was a cut about half an inch long where Moody’s knife had touched me.
“Moody has his ways,” Aunt Florrie said. “He ain’t finished growing up yet.”
My right knee was sore as a rising and I had to limp a little as I followed them to the house. The morning looked different after what had happened. It tasted different, and smelled different too. The sunlight was bright, but dimmed by what Moody had done.
My knee was so sore I set down on the bank above the path and pulled up my britches leg. There was a knot swelled up on the side of my knee, already turning blue. The two-by-four had hit me beside the kneecap. If it had hit the kneecap I’d have been crippled. The bone must have been bruised, for it felt sick and weak. But the skin wasn’t broke.
I looked out across the pasture toward the pines but didn’t see any sign of Moody. He’d probably gone to sleep on the pine needles inside the thicket. After he slept off his hangover he’d show up and act like nothing had ever happened. It was what he always done after we fought, once the devil worked out of him.
I looked at the pine thicket and the pasture and the plowed bottomland and wondered how I was ever going to get away to some better place, where I could do something important.
IT WAS ABOUT a month after the fight and my knee was still a little sore. It was going to be the hottest day in July, probably the hottest day of the year. Even before the sun was up I could feel the heat in the closeness, in the weight of the air. There wasn’t much dew along the path to the log barn when I went out to milk. The smell of the barn, and the smell of the cow, was sharper than usual. But the milk didn’t foam up in the bucket as much as it did in cooler weather.
“Get it strained and in the springhouse,” Mama said when I brought the bucket to the house.
“I was planning to,” I said.
“Milk will go blinky in the dog days,” Mama said.
“Or any other time if it’s left out,” I said. Mama and me tended to irritate each other in hot weather. And she’d been sharp with me lately anyway. When Mama got mad it would come out slow. You might not know for days how angry she was. It would come out when she give you orders, when she criticized whatever you’d done.
As I strained the milk, I watched the stiff straining cloth melt as warm milk poured through it into the stoneware pitcher. It was like watching starch melt as the fabric lost the shape it had dried in. The wet cloth sunk into the mouth of the pitcher and made a nest of milk.
“I’m going to pick some beans to can,” Mama said. It was her way of suggesting I help. It took forever to pick a bushel of cornfield beans because they was so short and slim. Mama expected me to help her and Fay pick the beans and break them up for canning. She didn’t expect Moody to help, but she counted on me.
“I’m going to mow below the hogpen and down by the branch,” I said.
“No use to mow this late in summer,” Mama said. “Most weeds has already gone to seed.”
“It’s a jungle for snakes and yellow jackets,” I said.
“Mowing weeds won’t put a thing on the table come January,” Mama said.
“Do you want the place to go wild?” I said. It was an old argument between Mama and me. I loved to mow with the scythe to keep the place neat. Mama thought it was a waste of time.
“Nobody pays you to mow weeds around the hogpen,” Mama said.
“Nobody pays me to milk the cow either,” I said and carried the pitcher out the door.
Long as I could remember I’d liked to cut weeds. People said it was another thing I took after Daddy. Since I was a boy I’d liked to take the scythe and trim along the edges of the fields. I wanted to make everything look like a park. I liked to make the place look groomed. The odd thing was I liked weeds too. I liked the fresh smell of weeds on a hot day steaming their scent through leaves and wilting a little in the sun. I liked the way big weeds growed one behind the other on a bank, reaching up into the sun, crowding every inch of space, with the joe-pye weed and hogweed reaching highest.
I placed the pitcher of warm milk in the cooling box of the spring-house. The water come almost to the bulge of the vessel. The cloth I’d tied over the top would keep the flies out. There was three other pitchers there. Mama or Fay would take one in the evening to leave by the hearth overnight to clabber. Mama would churn the clabber for butter on Thursday. The crocks of butter and pitchers of milk set in the cooling box like people in church with cold air running over their feet. It was dark as a church in the springhouse, and it sounded like a quiet service was going on. I closed the door and left the butter and eggs and milk and raspberries picked the day before chilling in the gloom.
Taking the scythe from the shed, I slipped the long whetrock into my hip pocket. Swinging the scythe over my shoulder like it was a curved rifle, I marched off to do battle with the big weeds. I would take the big lush stalks down a dozen at a time until the ground was flat as a lawn on a Flat Rock estate.
But where to start? I stopped by the hogpen and took the whet-rock from my pocket. Resting the end of the handle on the ground, I begun rubbing the blade with the stone. I liked the feel of whet grains cutting into steel. I worked along the edge of the blade, wearing it dusty and then brilliant, and turned the scythe to sharpen the other side. The blade lit up with my brushing. The whetstone on the steel sounded like an auctioneer: Give me a one and a one and a one. Who’ll give me a two and a two and a two? Sold to the gentleman right over there with the flower in his hat!
I blowed the gray grime off the whetrock and slipped it back into my pocket.
“Oof,” the pig said, snuffling up against the planks of the pen. “Oof oof.” The pig was always lively early in the morning. As the day got hotter it would find a spot in the corner and take a long nap. But now it turned quick as a cat, slamming the side of the pen, hoping I’d come with a bucket of slop to pour down the chute.
The pigpen smelled sour. Not just the sour of manure, but of festering summer mud. It was the sour of cobs rotting in the muck, of milk spilled from slop gone rancid. It was the sour of cabbage rotting and old dishwater. It was the sour of old juices standing in hoof pools and turning to ferment. The mud of the pen was deep and black. It was a grease of shit and bone jelly, of silt and fetid creams. Cobs stunk, and stalks of weeds pickled in the slime. Every day I throwed in armloads of fresh weeds for the hog, and the weeds soaked in the ooze. The trembling batter of the pen seeped out through cracks and glittered in the sun. The mud was deeper than the thickest pillow. Great curds and turds of mud got churned up by the hog’s hooves. Flies hung in a glistening veil over the grumbling hog. The air around the pen was a rainbow of stinks and fetors, poots and belches of rotten breath.
The dirt at the lower end of the pen was where I dug for fishing worms in the spring. In the black mealy compost there was twenty worms in every shovelful, orange worms and purple worms threaded like screws. There was wigglers whipping in frenzy like raw nerves and long night crawlers that glistened like snakes, worms with swole bands and blister rings, worms that flattened at the edges. You could dig a canful of worms there in a minute. Tangled together, the worms moistened theirselves with foam and suds and spit of slime.
The muck and musk of the hogpen growed the biggest weeds around the place. Stalks of corn volunteered from seeds in the manure. And sometimes pumpkins and tomatoes growed there too. But it was just plain weeds, ragweed and hogweed, plantains and iron-weed, for the most part. Biggest of all was the pokeweed that by late summer reached its purple stalks eight or ten or even twelve feet high. But pokeweed didn’t like the richest ground. It thrived along the edges of the spill from the hogpen, in the red clay and leached-out dirt of the old strawberry bed.
I swung the scythe by the path and sliced canes of
johnsongrass that dropped like little wheat to the ground. All grass grows jointed canes if left to mature and go to seed. I swept the blade over the ground, cutting everything off at about two inches. The cut stalks and leaves fell where they had growed. This is the way to put the earth in order, I thought. The blade hissed as it swung into the biggest weeds.
Weeds grow on stalks like little towers. Weeds have tubes and wires and shafts in their spines. Weeds have suction lines and veins going up and down inside, pulling juice from roots up to leaf tips. I swung the blade like I was pulling a big crooked oar. There was a rhythm I got into mowing, but it took a while to find it in the morning. Some days I never found the rhythm at all and kept speeding up and slowing down, swinging the blade farther out and closer in.
Ragweed has limbs that grow out of the main stalks like shelves. The limbs was braced and held by brackets. The limbs was kept stiff by the juice inside until the stems hardened. Weeds growed and filled out theirselves in the hot sun. But later in the day everything would wilt a little and go limp at the tips. Leaves that was crisp as new dollar bills in the morning dew would go rubbery and curl at the edges and crumble like spilled dried ink.
The big weeds reached out their limbs like they was resisting me. The weeds growed closer together than an army, their leaves overlapping like shields. The arms waved me back but I advanced a step and a swing at a time, and the weeds fell backward like they was pulled from beneath. This is the way to make weed fodder, I thought.
I didn’t think about how broke I was, and I didn’t think about what I was going to do in the fall. I didn’t think about how I’d made a fool of myself trying to preach. I didn’t think how silly I looked, and how all my plans had fell through. I didn’t think how Annie ignored me sometimes and flirted with other boys, and made me so mad I felt crazy.
Already I could smell my sweat and the scent of chemicals raising from the cut weeds. The bleeding stalks smelled like perfumes and spices. Fumes rose from the wet leaves like somebody had spilled varnish or paint thinner. It was intoxicating to smell the vapors rising from the felled ragweed and nettles. There was a bunch of chemical smells, of oils and saps and nectars. The scents made me a little dizzy. The air was lit with clear smoke and herbal fogs. There was a dozen different vapors in the air.
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