In Tall Cotton

by Charles G. Hulse

  We needn’t have worried. All Mom did was buy the car. The very Model-A that’s become almost a home now. She’d be a hundred and ten, she maintained, by the time it was paid off even with the special easy terms Shults had made for her, but she needed it because we were moving back to Galena and she’d have to drive herself to the one-room school at Wilson Run. She’d “got” another school.

  Back to Galena! I was thrilled. No more withering looks and sarcastic comments from Mary Ann. When I bowed out of the magic circle, she’d actually suggested that I was worn out anyway and ready for replacement. I could do without that sort of emasculation.

  We kissed Grandma and Grandpa goodbye with promises to come for Christmas. We were mobile now, our lives would change. We headed for home the back way past Uncle Jess and Aunt Dell’s place to show off the car but disaster had struck there. Aunt Dell had just up and walked out with Mavis and Sister leaving an hysterical Uncle Jesse and a note which read: “Jesse … We gone. You ain’t got guts enough to find us so see you in cort. In meantime you can kiss my ass.” That seemed to be that. We realized that part of Uncle Jesse’s hysteria was due to the fact he’d lost his three field hands with a corn crop ready for harvest.

  Moving back to Galena was moving back home. Scott and Bessie Moore who were old friends of Mom’s were our new landlords. They had converted their upstairs into an apartment—kitchen and two big rooms. Everything fitted us to a “T.” Even the long trip down the stairs, out the front door, around the front of the bay-windowed dining room, back along the side of the house to the walkway that led to the outhouse didn’t seem too much of an inconvenience. At least at first. When winter brought snow and rain it was a trek to be put off as long as possible.

  During vacation, just before we went down to Grandpa Woods for Christmas, a card came from Aunt Dell. It was a penny postcard stamped from Phoenix, Arizona.

  “Well,” Mom said. “At least one of the Woods heard from.” She handed the card to Junior. “Here. Read it to us.”

  “Dear Milly and boys,” he read. “Made it this far and just set down. I got work and girls will get. Merry Christmas. Love from the three purtiest—that’s the way she spells it, p-u-r-t—purtiest hitch-hickers you ever seen.”

  “I can just hear her,” I said. “She writes just like she talks.”

  “Hitch-hikers?” Junior looked at Mom with a slight frown. “Do you think they really hitch-hiked?”

  “You know your Aunt Dell. When she says she’s going to do something, she does it.” She shook her head. “I’m sure she did. Wouldn’t put it past her. An awful lot of people are heading west. I lost two more children at Wilson Run just before vacation. The Reese children. Mr. Reese came by the school and told me he had to pull out. Couldn’t make the farm pay. Jobs not available …”

  Her face was getting the sad look that was companion to any mention of the depression. “Hadn’t we better hurry?” I interrupted trying to avoid that dread word and the mood it induced.

  By the time we got over the James River, bearing to the right on the south-bound finger of the “Y” bridge under the huge cliff, it had started to snow. I bounced up and down in the back seat and started singing “Jingle Bells.” Mom and Junior joined in and we drove along with the snaking river on our right, its banks cushiony white clouds down to the black water’s edge. The leafless trees were having their straggly twisted and broken shapes softened by layers of snow, like cotton bandages. The grey cliffs on the left had turned black and glistened with a wet sheen. Everything was black or white. There was no color anywhere.

  Mom never drove very fast but now that there was some chance of ice, it was a very cautiously driven Ford that rounded a sharp bend just outside Blue Eye, Missouri, a tiny town right on the Missouri-Arkansas border. Stopped in front of our slowly moving car was a larger, later-vintage Ford. Just stopped, not parked. Dead in the middle of the road. No attempt had been made to pull over to the side, it had just stopped as though the driver had something better to do than make room for another vehicle. Since there was practically no traffic it was a reasonably safe thing to do.

  Mom made the usual and often fatal mistake of braking instead of gearing down and we slid dangerously near the stopped car so that I could see what the driver had stopped for. He was lifting a bottle to his mouth and drinking thirstily until the girl in the seat beside him gave a wild yelp of surprise at our sudden appearance along side them. Junior’s face at his window was staring directly at them, not a foot away. The driver coughed and spilled some amber liquid down the front of his coat. We were oozing by so slowly, it was like slow motion in the movies. I could see a couple in the back seat fly apart from an embrace at the sound of the girl’s yelp as though a bomb had gone off between them. The woman in the back seat had bright red hair, so fuzzy and abundant that it obliterated part of her partner’s face.

  “Hey, wasn’t that…” Junior swung around in his seat to stare into the back seat of the flashy car.

  We came to a full stop just about three feet in front of the other car. Mom was out of the Model-A before I knew what was happening. “Keep the motor running,” she ordered Junior in a tight voice as she flew past my window and had the back door of the other car open before I could switch myself around on my knees to look out the rear window.

  “What’s going on?” Junior screamed from the front seat, struggling with the hand-brake and fidgeting around to reach the accelerator with his foot.

  “I don’t know,” I screamed back. But I could see Mom’s backside perfectly clearly. It was sticking out the back door of the neighboring car, with her upper body inside, one foot on the running board. Her backside was bouncing around in a strange dance, knees bending and straightening up until her foot slipped out from under her on the icy ground. She fell, banging her knee on the running board and at the same time hauling the woman with the red hair out of the car practically on top of her. “She’s pulling that woman by the hair,” I yelled. And she was. She was hanging on as though she had a huge fish on a line and wasn’t about to let it go. The woman was screaming bloody murder, and the man in the back seat pulled the woman back into the car, causing Mom to lose her grip on that great tangle of fuzz. “Now she’s slapping at the woman,” I reported with the excitement of a sport’s announcer on radio. “Wow! She’s really working her over!”

  With his foot on the accelerator, Junior was stretched out almost flat on the driver’s seat, but had his window rolled down and his head out it. “It is Dad!” he said with disbelief. “Who’s that woman with him that Mom’s hitting?”

  It was getting more and more like a movie, only now it wasn’t slow motion. Mom was back on her feet in a good solid stance and her elbows were pumping as though she were working out on a punching bag. She pulled one arm way back and swung with all her might and we heard a resounding slap as the woman let out a particularly violent scream. The woman in the front seat was on her knees facing the back seat, pushing and tugging at Mom. We could see Mom say something through clenched teeth as she slammed the door with all her strength, almost causing her to loose her footing, and ran back to our car and was in place and had the car in motion in one fluid movement. Junior was the perfect co-pilot, easing off the hand-brake just as Mom let out the clutch and we pulled forward, picking up speed quickly as Mom shifted smoothly from low, to second, to high.

  “Finally another Woods heard from.” She wasn’t even panting. She didn’t seem to have any reaction to her brief but violent exertions. It was a fairly short scene, but it seemed to go on forever while it lasted. Now she sat as straight as ever. Her hands on the wheel firm, not tight. Had it really happened? Had we actually seen Mom behaving like that? Creating a real cat-fight, screaming, scratching and pulling hair? It couldn’t have happened, I thought. Mom wouldn’t lower herself. But I had to believe my eyes and I had only to glance up at the rear-view mirror to see Mom’s triumphant look to know that it had happened. Her eyes were sparkling, her cheeks rosy, and a funny little smil
e was trying to break through her iron control. She looked young and bright and healthy as if she’d just had a bracing run in the snow.

  “Maybe it’s the cold that’s forcing them out of the woods,” Junior said looking straight ahead. “The Woods are coming out of the woods.”

  Mom glanced at him, he turned toward her and they burst out laughing. I joined in, a bit nervously not knowing how much of a joke we could make of this. When we got into fights, we were scolded. No matter how much we’d insist that it had been the other person’s fault. Mom would always say, “You must have done something. Nobody fights for nothing.” She’d sure done something. She’d just knocked a woman around and looked positively pleased with herself.

  “You know that I’m not particularly proud of what happened back there,” Mom said, trying to keep a note of triumph out of her voice. “I saw it was your father in there even before we passed the car. I know the back of his head pretty well.” She let out a little laugh. “I’ve seen it going out the door often enough.” I started to laugh, but a look from Junior nipped that in the bud. Mom looked back at me in the mirror quickly. “I meant that to be funny. Sort of. But we all know that it isn’t very funny. Well, it hasn’t been.” She concentrated on the road for a few minutes. “I don’t know what came over me. I’ve never had a feeling like it before. That red hair seemed to turn me blind with rage.” She paused. “Like I’ve read they do at bull fights. They wave something red to get the bull stirred up. Well, something stirred me up and I had to get my hands on that head of hair.”

  “You just saw red,” Junior said reasonably.

  “Literally,” Mom agreed. “And this is the last time I want this mentioned. Is that understood?” She sounded her stern school teacher self.

  We two just nodded, both knowing that this was serious and Mom was talking to us as adults. About intimate things that she’d never touched on before and I’m sure neither of us would have done anything to stop her even if we noticed that the car was sliding into a ditch. She went on at length about the necessity for secrecy of this embarrassing encounter. Above all, we were not to mention anything to Grandpa and Grandma. They’d be very hurt if they knew Dad was back and hadn’t contacted them.

  “The idea that he’d be this close … At this time of the year when families are …” Mom shrugged and seemed to drift off into thoughts of her own. So did I. And for this time of the year, my thoughts weren’t very Christian. This was the most blatant expression of Dad’s disregard for his family to date. He was here. Right here between Galena and Hi. Down here in this unchartered no-man’s land vaguely called The South End of the County where he’d met, married and left Mom with two babies. Here he was with a red-headed floozy. Right in our own back yard, as it were. It was apparent that he didn’t give a—well, in his own words—a fuck what happened to us. He really made the Wilkins boy’s description of a father’s basic role ring with sad truth: We were nothing but the white stuff off his pecker. If whatever he did to create me and Junior he could do with red-headed floozies wherever he found them seemed to diminish our very existence. OK. If he couldn’t recognize us, why should we recognize him? It could have been anybody’s pecker. Only it wasn’t. I look too much like him. No, I’m his. I just wish he’d look after his own a little more carefully.

  After Mom had been silent for a while, I asked, “Did you know who …”

  “Never saw her before in my life. None of them. I have an idea that they all have an inkling who I am by now. I just hope I never see any of them again.”

  “You mean Dad?” I was lining up a lot of questions to put to Junior. Like: Why didn’t Mom strike out at Dad? Why only the woman? It seemed it ought to be Dad she was mad at. Unless, of course, they really were divorced and they no longer had any hold on each other. I kept wondering if Junior knew more about it than I did.

  “Dad? Oh, good lord, no.” She paused and I saw her eyes in the mirror narrow with concentration. “At least I don’t think I meant him. I just wish he’d make up his mind what he’s going to do. And with whom. He’s been away more than he’s been with us since you were both babies. Oh, I have to admit that in the beginning, there was a reason. He was looking for work. And he did work. And he even sent a little money home. Well, once or twice. But… How can I say it so you’ll understand? It’s just that … Well, hell—as Dell would say—I love him. He’s your father. And nothing would please me more than for him to act like it.”

  “At least we know he’s in the neighborhood. Even if he disappears back into the woods, the woods are near ones,” Junior said softly.

  “I was just thinking that,” Mom said.

  It was a Christmas like others we’d spent on the farm, with the same magic ingredients, only we didn’t know it would be the last in that most perfect setting (Mom always referred to it as ‘storybook’). Grandpa had the tree cut—the tallest we’d ever had—and ready for us to decorate. There was a box of decorations, rather skimpy now, the silver icicles wadded into lumps and broken into small pieces that were difficult to drape over the thick furry branches. Most of the store-bought ornaments had been smashed over the years by us or other grandchildren but we improvised with bits of cotton sprinkled about like snow, colored paper cut into all sorts of shapes, cardboard stars covered with tin foil saved from cigarette packs, and paper chains made quickly and messily with flour and water paste. We made long ropes of popcorn threaded on string and big popcorn balls made by sticking the popcorn together with warm molasses that was being heated up for us to pull into taffy. Pulling taffy was Junior’s favorite sport— next to baseball—and his taffy was the smoothest and silkiest. The final touches on the tree were the miniature hand-dipped candles that Grandma Idy made by melting down the paraffin she used to seal her jam and jelly jars. She always kept everything—there’d eventually be a use for it.

  The smells from the kitchen were almost unbearable. On Christmas Eve all the sweet things, the mince pies, the cakes and cookies, would be baking, the smells meeting and battling with the fresh popcorn from the fireplace in the living room. Christmas Day with the turkey stuffed and baking along with a country ham that had been cured in the smoke-house and surrounded by sweet potatoes with marshmallows that we’d brought from Scott Moore’s store, I would finally have to be pushed out the door by Junior to race madly around the house in the fresh snow, trying to clear our heads of the maddening odors.

  Running reminded me of another Christmas here, all the smells and the snow and the tree much the same, only Dad had been with us. It wasn’t as gay as we wanted this one to be. Something had gone wrong between Mom and Dad. Even way back then. I don’t know quite what. I did know that Dad had been drinking quite a bit and on Christmas Eve, we could hear Mom trying to shush Dad’s angry voice after we’d gone to bed on our pallet on the kitchen floor next to the still-warm range. He was still roaring when I went to sleep and it was his voice that woke me the next morning.

  We could feel his unfocused anger when Junior and I went in by the fireplace to dress. Grandma and Grandpa were out doing chores that not even Christmas morning would allow them to put off. We were scuffling around, Junior trying to tickle me which made me squeal—my ticklishness is a family joke and I could become hysterical if someone looked as though they were even thinking about touching my ribs. I had taken off my pajamas and was giggling and stumbling getting into my underpants. Junior was that one step ahead of me, he had his underwear on, but nothing else.

  All of a sudden Dad exploded. “You both are turnin’ into a couple of sissies. Gigglin’ and ticklin’. Ought to be toughened up. And it ain’t too soon nor too late. Now git! Both of you. Outside. Right now! Just like you are.”

  “We don’t have our clothes on, Dad,” I whined.

  “I can see,” he bellowed. “I’m not blind. I said like you are. And I mean it. Barefooted and bareassed. Git out there and run three times around the house. You hear me? I said now. Three times and I’ll be countin’ from the porch.”

&nb
sp; “Woody!” Mom stuck her head around the kitchen door. “There’s a foot of snow out there. They’ll catch their death …”

  “You keep out of this, Milly,” Dad’s voice was steel. “When I tell my kids to do something, I mean it.” He turned a furious flushed face to us. “Now git.”

  Junior grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the door. “Hey, that’ll be fun. Come on, Tots, a race in the snow!”

  “But I’m naked . . .”

  “Make you run faster. Come on.” His eyes were imploring me, begging me to go. Dad’s explosion had said something special to him. He seemed to know that if we did as ordered—even something as silly as running barefooted around the house—the tension building up between Mom and Dad might be relaxed.

  We went. The minute my feet hit the snow, I was away. I’ve never run so fast in my life. Each step was so painful that the only thing to do was keep the feet off the ground by keeping them flying. The first lap around the house was such a shock that I don’t remember it. It was the third one, with the snow feeling like hot coals and the cold air that didn’t seem to want to go into my lungs, that I thought I’d never make. Junior was a few feet ahead of me, looking back from time to time to make sure I was all right. His breath was as heavy as smoke in the freezing air. By the time we finished at the edge of the porch, my feet were numb, my nose was running like a valve and I was choking on each attempt to breathe that wouldn’t bring any air with it. Junior pulled me onto the porch and half carried me to the door. We both fell through it, winded and exhausted. Tears of fatigue and cold were mingled with my snot and I’d have cried and screamed if I’d had to breath to do it. Dad was standing by the coat rack beside the door, putting a bottle back into the pocket of his overcoat. He hadn’t even watched! Junior hurried us both over to the fireplace as Mom came running out of the kitchen with two warm towels that felt like they’d come out of the oven. Junior hopped up and down exclaiming how much fun it had been. I made no effort to pretend I liked it. He gave me a look telling me to follow his lead. I tried to laugh but the sound wasn’t convincing. Dad just stood grinning down at us as Mom fussed and rubbed us down with the towels. He’d made some sort of point. But what was it? To prove that he was boss? He always seems to assert his authority when he has the least right to do so.