The only normal person in the house was Calvin, the three-year-old. The trouble was that normal for him meant tagging along after Alvin Junior like a kitten on a mouse’s trail. He never came close enough to play with Alvin Junior, or to touch him or talk to him or anything useful. He was just there, always there at the edge of things, so Alvin would look up just as Calvin looked away, or catch a glimpse of his shirt as he ducked behind a door, or sometimes in the dark of night just hear a faint breathing that was closer than it ought to be, which told him Calvin wasn’t lying on his cot, he was standing right there by Alvin’s bed, watching. Nobody ever seemed to notice it. It had been more than a year since Alvin gave up trying to get him to stop. If Alvin Junior ever said, “Ma, Cally’s pestering me,” Mama would just say, “Al Junior, he didn’t say a thing, he didn’t touch you, and if you don’t like him just standing quiet as a body could ask, well, that’s just too bad for you, because it suits me fine. I wish certain other of my children could learn to be as still.” Alvin figured that it wasn’t that Calvin was normal today, it’s that the rest of the family had just come up to his regular level of craziness.
Papa just stared and stared at the split wood. Now and then he’d fit it together the way it was. Once he spoke, real quiet. “Measure, you sure you got all them pieces?”
Measure said, “Ever single bit, Pa, I couldn’t’ve got more with a broom. I couldn’t’ve got more if I’d bent down and lapped it up like a dog.”
Ma was listening, of course. Papa once said that when Ma was paying attention, she could hear a squirrel fart in the woods a half mile away in the middle of a storm with the girls rattling dishes and the boys all chopping wood. Alvin Junior wondered sometimes if that meant Ma knew more witchery than she let on, since one time he sat in the woods not three yards away from a squirrel for more than an hour, and he never heard it so much as belch.
Anyway, she was right there in the house tonight, so of course she heard what Papa asked, and she heard what Measure answered, and her being as crazy as Papa, she lashed out like as if Measure had just taken the name of the Lord. “You mind your tongue, young man, because the Lord said unto Moses on the mount, honor your father and mother that your days may be long on the land which the Lord your God has given you, and when you speak fresh to your father then you are taking days and weeks and even years off your own life, and your soul is not in such a condition that you should welcome an early visit to the judgment bar to meet your Savior and hear him say your eternal fate!”
Measure wasn’t half so worried about his eternal fate as he was worried about Mama being riled at him. He didn’t try to argue that he wasn’t talking smart or being sassy—only a fool would do that when Mama was already hot. He just started in looking humble and begging her pardon, not to mention the forgiveness of Papa and the sweet mercy of the Lord. By the time she was done with ragging him, poor Measure had already apologized a half a dozen times, so that she finally just grumped and went back to her sewing.
Then Measure looked up at Alvin Junior and winked.
“I saw that,” said Mama, “and if you don’t go to hell, Measure, I’ll get up a petition to Saint Peter to send you there.”
“I’d sign that petition myself,” said Measure, looking meek as a puppy dog that just piddled on a big man’s boot.
“That’s right you would,” said Mama, “and you’d sign it in blood, too, because by the time I’m through with you there’ll be enough open wounds to keep ten clerks in bright red ink for a year.”
Alvin Junior couldn’t help himself. Her dire threat just struck him funny. And even though he knew he was taking his life in his hands, he opened up his mouth to laugh. He knew that if he laughed he’d have Mama’s thimble hard on his head, or maybe her hand clapped hard on his ear, or even her hard little foot smashed right down on his bare foot, which she did once to David the time he told her she should have learnt the word no sometime before she had thirteen mouths to cook for.
This was a matter of life and death. This was more frightening than the ridgebeam, which after all never hit him, which was more than he could say for Mama. So he caught that laugh before it got loose, and he turned it into the first thing he could think of to say.
“Mama,” he said, “Measure can’t sign no petition in blood, cause he’d already be dead, and dead people don’t bleed.”
Mama looked him in the eye and spoke slow and careful. “They do when I tell them to.”
Well, that did it. Alvin Junior just laughed out loud. And that set half the girls to laughing. Which made Measure laugh. And finally Mama laughed, too. They all just laughed and laughed till they were mostly crying and Mama started sending people upstairs to bed, including Alvin Junior.
All the excitement had Alvin Junior feeling pretty spunky, and he hadn’t figured out yet that sometimes he ought to keep all that jumpiness locked up tight. It happened that Matilda, who was sixteen and fancied herself a lady, was walking up the stairs right in front of him. Everybody hated walking anywhere behind Matilda, she took such delicate, ladylike steps. Measure always said he’d rather walk in line behind the moon, cause it moved faster. Now Matilda’s backside was right in Al Junior’s face, swaying back and forth, and he thought of what Measure said about the moon, and reckoned how Matilda’s backside was just about as round as the moon, and then he got to wondering what it would be like to touch the moon, and whether it would be hard like a beetle’s back or squishy as a slug. And when a boy six years old who’s already feeling spunky gets a thought like that in his head, it’s not even half a second till his finger is two inches deep in delicate flesh.
Matilda was a real good screamer.
Al might have got slapped right then, except Wastenot and Wantnot were right behind him, saw the whole thing, and laughed so hard at Matilda that she started crying and fled on up the stairs two steps at a time, not ladylike at all. Wastenot and Wantnot carried Alvin up the stairs between them, so high up he got a little dizzy, singing that old song about St. George killing the dragon, only they sang it about St. Alvin, and where the song usually said something about poking the old dragon a thousand times and his sword didn’t melt in the fire, they changed sword to finger and made even Measure laugh.
“That’s a filthy filthy song!” shouted ten-year-old Mary, who stood guard outside the big girls’ door.
“Better stop singing that song,” said Measure, “before Mama hears you.”
Alvin Junior could never understand why Mama didn’t like that song, but it was true that the boys never sang it where she could hear. The twins stopped singing and clambered up the ladder to the loft. At that moment the door to the big girls’ room was flung open and Matilda, her eyes all red from crying, stuck her head out and shouted, “You’ll be sorry!”
“Ooh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Wantnot said in a squeaky voice.
Only then did Alvin remember that when the girls set out to get even, he would be the main victim. Calvin was still considered the baby, so he was safe enough, and the twins were older and bigger and there was always two of them. So when the girls got riled, Alvin was first in line for their deadly wrath. Matilda was sixteen, Beatrice was fifteen, Elizabeth was fourteen, Anne was twelve, Mary was ten, and they all preferred picking on Alvin to practically any other recreation that the Bible would permit. One time when Alvin was tormented past endurance and only Measure’s strong arms held him back from hot-blooded murder with a hayfork, Measure allowed as how the punishments of hell would most likely consist of living in the same house with five women who were all about twice a man’s size.
Ever since then, Alvin wondered what sin he committed before he was born to make him deserve to grow up half-damned to start with.
Alvin went into the little room he shared with Calvin and just set there, waiting for Matilda to come and kill him. But she didn’t come and didn’t come, and he realized that she was probably waiting till after the candles were all out, so that no one would know which of his sisters snuck in and
snuffed him out. Heaven knew he’d given them all ample reason to want him dead in the last two months alone. He was trying to guess whether they’d stifle him with Matilda’s goosedown pillow—which would be the first time he was ever allowed to touch it—or if he’d die with Beatrice’s precious sewing scissors in his heart, when all of a sudden he realized that if he didn’t get outside to the privy in about twenty-five seconds he’d embarrass himself right in his trousers.
Somebody was in the privy, of course, and Alvin stood outside jumping and yelling for three minutes and still they wouldn’t come out. It occurred to him that it was probably one of the girls, in which case this was the most devilish plan they’d ever come up with, keeping him out of the privy when they knew he was scared to go into the woods after dark. It was a terrible vengeance. If he messed himself he’d be so ashamed he’d probably have to change his name and run away, and that was a whole lot worse than a poke in the behind. It made him mad as a constipated buffalo, it was so unfair.
Finally he was mad enough to make the ultimate threat. “If you don’t come out I’ll do it right in front of the door so you’ll step in it when you come out!”
He waited, but whoever was in there didn’t say, “If you do I’ll make you lick it off my shoe,” and since that was the customary response, Al realized for the first time that the person inside the privy might not be one of his sisters after all. It was certainly not one of the boys. Which left only two possibilities, each one worse than the other. Al was so mad at himself he smacked his own head with his fist, but it didn’t make him feel no better. Papa would probably give him a lick, but even worse would be Mama. She might give him a tongue-lashing, which was bad enough, but if she was in a real vile temper, she’d get that cold look on her face and say real soft, “Alvin Junior, I used to hope that at least one of my boys would be a born gentleman, but now I see my life was wasted,” which always made him feel about as low as he knew how to feel without dying.
So he was almost relieved when the door opened and Papa stood there, still buttoning his trousers and looking none too happy. “Is it safe for me to step out this door?” he asked coldly.
“Yup,” said Alvin Junior.
“What?”
“Yes sir.”
“Are you sure? There’s some wild animals around here that think it’s smart to leave their do on the ground outside privy doors. I tell you that if there’s any such animal I’ll lay a trap and catch it by the back end one of these nights. And when I find it in the morning, I’ll stitch up its bung hole and turn it loose to bloat up and die in the woods.”
“Sorry, Papa.”
Papa shook his head and started walking toward the house. “I don’t know what’s wrong with your bowel, boy. One minute you don’t need to go and the next minute you’re about to die.”
“Well if you’d just build another outhouse I’d be fine,” Al Junior muttered. Papa didn’t hear him, though, because Alvin didn’t actually say it till the privy door was closed and Papa’d gone back to the house, and even then he didn’t say it very loud.
Alvin rinsed his hands at the pump a long time, because he feared what was waiting for him back in the house. But then, alone outside in the darkness, he began to be afraid for another reason. Everybody said that a White man never could hear when a Red man was walking through the woods, and his big brothers got some fun out of telling Alvin that whenever he was alone outside, especially at night, there was Reds in the forest, watching him, playing with their flint-bladed tommy-hawks and itching to have his scalp. In broad daylight, Al didn’t believe them, but at night, his hands cold with the water, a chill ran through him, and he thought he even knew where the Red was standing. Just over his shoulder, back over near the pigsty, moving so quiet that the pigs didn’t even grunt and the dogs didn’t bark or nothing. And they’d find Al’s body, all hairless and bloody, and then it’d be too late. Bad as his sisters were—and they were bad—Al figured they’d be better than dying from a Red man’s flint in his head. He fair to flew from the pump to the house, and he didn’t look back to see if the Red was really there.
As soon as the door was closed, he forgot his fears of silent invisible Reds. Things were right quiet in the house, which was pretty suspicious to start with. The girls were never quiet till Papa shouted at them at least three times each night. So Alvin walked, up real careful, looking before every step, checking over his shoulder so often he started getting a crick in his neck. By the time he was inside his room with the door closed he was so jittery that he almost hoped they’d do whatever they were planning to do and get it over with.
But they didn’t do it and they didn’t do it. He looked around the room by candlelight, turned down his bed, looked into every corner, but there was nothing there. Calvin was asleep with his thumb in his mouth, which meant that if they had prowled around his room, it had been a while ago. He began to wonder if maybe, just this once, the girls had decided to leave him be or even do their dirty tricks to the twins. It would be a whole new life for him, if the girls started being nice. Like as if an angel came down and lifted him right out of hell.
He stripped off his clothes quick as he could, folded them, and put them on the stool by his bed so they wouldn’t be full of roaches in the morning. He had kind of an agreement with the roaches. They could get into anything they wanted if it was on the floor, but they didn’t climb into Calvin’s bed or Alvin’s neither, and they didn’t climb onto his stool. In return, Alvin never stomped them. As a result Alvin’s room was pretty much the roach sanctuary of the house, but since they kept the treaty, he and Calvin were the only ones who never woke up screaming about roaches in the bed.
He took his nightgown off its peg and pulled it on over his head.
Something bit him under the arm. He cried out from the sharp pain. Something else bit him on the shoulder. Whatever it was, it was all over inside his nightgown, and as he yanked it off, it kept right on nipping him everywhere. Finally it was off, and he stood there stark naked slapping and brushing with his hands to try to get the bugs or whatever they were off him.
Then he reached down and carefully picked up his nightgown. He couldn’t see anything scurrying away from it, and even when he shook it and shook it, nary a bug fell off. Something else fell off. It glinted for a moment in the candlelight and made a tiny twinking sound when it hit the floor.
Only then did Alvin Junior notice the stifled giggling from the room next door. Oh, they got him, they got him sure. He sat on the edge of his bed, picking pins out of his nightgown and poking them into the bottom corner of his quilt. He never thought they’d be so mad they’d risk losing one of Mama’s precious steel pins, just to get even with him. But he should have known. Girls never did have any bounds of fair play, the way boys did. When a boy knocked you down in a wrestling match, why, he’d either jump on you or wait for you to get back up, and either way you’d be even—both up or both down. But Al knew from painful experience that girls’d kick you when you were down and gang up on you whenever they had the chance. When they fought, they fought in order to end the fight as quick as they could. Took all the fun out of it.
Just like tonight. It wasn’t a fair punishment, him poking her with his finger, and them getting him all jabbed up with pins. A couple of those places were bleeding, they stabbed so deep. And Alvin didn’t reckon Matilda had so much as a bruise, though he wished she did.
Alvin Junior wasn’t mean, no sir. But sitting there on the edge of the bed, taking pins out of his nightgown, he couldn’t help but notice the roaches going about their business in the cracks of the floor, and he couldn’t help imagining what it would be like if all those roaches just happened to go a-calling in a certain room full of giggles.
So he knelt down on the floor and set the candle right there, and he began whispering to the roaches, just the way he did the day he made his peace treaty with them. He started telling them all about nice smooth sheets and soft squishy skin they could scamper on, and most of all about M
atilda’s satin pillowcase on her goosedown pillow. But they didn’t seem to care about that. Hungry, that’s all they are, thought Alvin. All they care about is food, food and fear. So he started telling them about food, the most perfectly delicious food they ever ate in their life. The roaches perked right up and came close to listen, though nary one of them climbed on him, which was right in keeping with the treaty. All the food you ever wanted, all over that soft pink skin. And it’s safe, too, not a speck of danger, nothing to worry about, you just go on in there and find the food on that soft pink squishy smooth skin.
Sure enough, a few of the roaches started skittering under Alvin’s door, and then more and more of them, and finally the whole troop went off in a single great cavalry charge under the door, through the wall, their bodies shiny and glowing in the candlelight, guided by their eternal insatiable hunger, fearless because Al had told them there wasn’t nothing to fear.
It wasn’t ten seconds before he heard the first whoop from the room next door. And within a minute the whole house was in such an uproar you’d’ve thought it was on fire. Girls screaming, boys shouting, and big old boots stomping as Papa rushed up the stairs and squashed roaches. Al was about as happy as a pig in mud.
Seventh Son Page 6