by Laird Hunt
Snug and happy as they were, those hay-wagon couples called out for us to climb aboard and join them but the driver said he couldn’t take any more load. Bud said it was true it looked like the tires were about to burst their sides. The subject of tires got Dale and Pops to complaining about walking again after the hay wagon rolled off, and after a while Bud spat and cracked his knuckles and told them to shut up.
“Tell you what, you think you can take us both?” said Dale.
“Yeah, what do you say? You think you could?” said Pops.
“Aw, I could take you both and her too, even if she had some of her pencils ready to poke at me with,” said Bud, pointing at me.
“What kind of pencils?” said Pops.
“What in fuck does it matter?” said Dale.
“Ticonderogas,” I said.
“I get the best,” said Bud. “Buy them by the box and get a discount.”
“Now he’s bragging about his pencils,” said Dale.
“They are pretty good pencils,” I said.
This made Bud and Pops laugh, and Dale told them they could go fuck themselves with Bud’s fine pencils if I could spare any, and I said if we had a goddamn car and not a wreck left by the side of the road I’d go straight over and get some, and Bud cracked his knuckles again, and Pops made a comment that set Dale to chuckling, and we all stopped to rest and squabble a speck under an oak tree.
“Either one of you two want to arm wrestle?” said Bud.
“I’d of laid you flat down when I was younger,” said Pops. He was looking up at one of the long low oak branches when he said it.
“Listen,” he said. “You’re all laughing at me, old and fat as I am, but I’ll tell you what. You want to see something, help me get up on that branch.”
Dale said, “No one is laughing at you, Pops.”
“Never mind if you ain’t. Help me up. I’ll show you something. I wasn’t always a old fat thing. It’s not just singing I know how to do.”
“You ain’t that old, Pops,” I said.
“Let’s save the trees for their lynching work,” said Dale.
“Come on, let’s help him up, he wants to show us something,” Bud said. “I want to see it.”
In the end it was all three of us helped push him up the tree and onto the branch. He sat there huffing a good long stretch, louder than all three of us put together, and I thought maybe that was it, that was his trick, to be fat and ear-horned up in a tree. Which you’ll admit wouldn’t have been just the small end of nothing.
Still, there was more to it, and when he got his breath back he said, “Now you all think I’m decrepit, watch this. Watch good. And remember when I’m doing it that I used to be able to do it and plenty more on a wire.”
“Is that true?” I whispered to Dale.
“Don’t you have some pencils to sharpen?” Dale said.
We watched. Pops groaned and huffed and got himself onto his feet.
“Easy there, Pops,” said Dale.
Pops gave out a little laugh, then he lifted his arms straight out from his sides and spit some chaw out of his mouth.
“Tell him to get down from there. This is idiotic. He’s going to fall off and break his neck,” I said.
“He’s all right.”
“He is not.”
“I can hear you, Mrs. Henshaw,” said Pops. “And while I appreciate the concern, you can rest assured that I have undertaken this exercise many a time before. I once spent a night on a wire and got paid fifty dollars in the morning for it.”
“You slept on a wire?” I said.
“That’s good money,” said Bud.
“Fifty dollars,” said Pops. He spoke through pursed lips and had a look of concentration on his face. He was making the tips of his fingers flutter. There were huge sweat marks under his arms. A fly landed on his ear horn and then on the side of his face but he went on with his concentrating like it wasn’t there.
“Now here it is, you all watching?” he asked.
“We’re all watching, Pops,” said Bud.
Pops said, “All right,” then lifted up one of his legs and closed his eyes, then drew his arms into his chest and back out again, and when his fingertips were as far away from him as they could get he bowed his head, tensed the leg was on the tree branch, jumped, and landed on his other foot with a crash I thought would take down not just the branch but the tree entire.
“You can all start breathing again,” Pops said, opening his eyes and smiling down at us. Which is when, like it was part of the trick, a big cornflower boy blowing on a whistle bloomed up out of the evening light. He was on a bicycle and had a referee whistle in his mouth and he was swooshing hard down the road as happy as a Baptist banging his Bible on the cash register. When he saw us he gave out a whistle or two, put on the brakes, and wobbled his way over the dusty gravel to a stop.
“It’s a hot one,” he said.
“Hot as they get,” I said.
“Is this the road to Marvel? I was told it was.”
“You heading there? Today of all days?”
“Could be. What’s that feller doing up in that tree?”
“This is what I was doing,” said Pops. He lifted his leg up again but our attention had turned elsewhere and his leg drooped back down.
“Listen, I’ll give you ten dollar for that bicycle,” Bud said.
The boy laughed and blew on his whistle.
“You’d buy a bicycle from a cornflower?” he said. “I thought this was cornflower-killing country. ‘Today of all days.’” He looked at me when he said this. Gave out a handsome grin.
“If it would get me where I was going on a hot day, yes, I would,” said Bud.
“Hell, I’ll give you fifteen,” said Dale.
“You ain’t got fifteen,” I said.
“Well, I’ll give you what I got,” said Dale.
“What you got is nothing since it’s all in my purse or ate up by your pig,” I said.
“He have a pig?” said the boy. “I like pigs. I got a granddaddy works at a slaughterhouse.
“You have any pigs?” said the boy. He was looking at Bud. He hadn’t turned his head, just his eyes.
“I’m in insurance,” said Bud.
“Why don’t you sell me a policy?”
“You have money?”
“I’ve got this bicycle.”
Bud laughed. The boy didn’t. He looked over at Dale without moving his head then back at Bud. He spoke slowly.
“Maybe you want to try to take my bicycle, mister,” he said. He said it seriously but Bud took it like it was a joke.
“What if I did?”
“You think you could accomplish the task?”
“Listen to how this cornflower talks!”
“Do you think you could?”
“If I wanted to. ’Course I could.”
“Why don’t you, then?”
“Maybe I will.”
“I had a bicycle once; she was a beaut, built just like a pretty lady,” said Pops. Somehow or other he had got himself down out of the tree and come over to sit beside us. He had to cough in the middle of saying it and when he coughed he shook his ear horn off its kilter. The boy turned his head and his eyes both and smiled.
“You folks all done dropped your biscuits on this hot evening,” he said.
Bud bristled a little when he said it but he didn’t get up and it was a good thing, in my opinion, even for Bud, that the boy and his powerful legs was already swooshing away.
“I’d have taken that bicycle if I had wanted it,” said Bud when he was gone.
“’Course you would have,” said Pops. “We’d of helped you too. Wouldn’t we have, Dale?”
Dale didn’t say anything. Bud blustered about how he wouldn’t have needed any help. Not against any cornflower kid wearing a whistle.
“I know you wouldn’t have needed it. I’m just saying we would have helped you. That’s different. It’s two different things.”
“I ex
pect it is,” said Bud. He looked over at me, no doubt in this world hoping I would offer up some additional puff about how he would have demolished that boy without even breaking any more sweat, but you could see Pops had already got the ship turned back straight enough. Bud was simple that way. I gave him a smile but kept my mouth shut.
“Anyways, a bicycle is a beautiful thing,” said Pops. He said it soft and dreamy. As if bicycles had been as important to his past as being skinnier and sleeping on wires.
“The hell they are,” said Dale. “You can crash on those things quicker than you can sneeze. And next time leave Sassy out of it, Ottie Lee.”
That’s what he called that pig. He had named her that spring to spite me. Lord in heaven. I don’t think I need to say any more about it.
“I’m bored and hot. I want my rematch,” I said.
“You ain’t getting any rematch, Ottie Lee.”
“Then I want a dance.”
Dale clicked his tongue and shook his head.
“We’ll hum. Or Pops can sing. You’ll sing while we dance, won’t you, Pops?”
“Sure I will,” said Pops. “What’ll it be? I can sing anything and climb trees both. You all saw that, didn’t you? You saw me up in that tree? That boy stole my thunder. I used to do that on the wire. Anytime I wanted to.”
Pops was already clearing his throat and priming his song pump, and I began to stand, but then Bud surprised us all by starting to cry. You couldn’t tell what it was at first; it looked like he had his head down and was laughing.
“Now I have seen it all,” said Dale.
“Leave him be,” I said.
“He’s thinking about them is what he’s doing,” Pops said.
“He’s drunk too much is what it is,” said Dale.
“Too much drink and too much sun,” I said. “He’ll be all right.” I didn’t know if he would be or wouldn’t but it was something to say.
Bud cleared his throat and wiped his mouth. He gave us over a sorry smile and a drippy, half-assed laugh. “Memory lane, it just kind of came up on me, didn’t even know I was driving down it, my girl had a bicycle,” he said, his voice cracking a little. “A minute ago you were going to dance,” he added, then his face crunched up and his shoulders gave a heave and he buried his head in his hands.
“You were going to dance with me, Dale Henshaw,” I said.
Dale shrugged, looked at Bud, then at me. “You’re the one never wants to dance.”
I started to deny it, then stopped. I’ve already said it was true. Least the part about dancing he was referring to.
Pops walked over and gave Bud a pat on the back then followed it with a couple of sharp whacks. He said, “Let’s get up and go. We got to go. We got to git!”
“Every goddamn thing is going to the show and here we sit,” said Dale.
Not a one of us moved, though.
And even though Bud quit his crying soon enough and got back to joking and bragging, I don’t think any of us even much more than looked up a little while later when a truck following its headlights went speeding past. Tell you what, we all got interested when that truck stopped. It took a while for the dust to settle but we didn’t have to see much to know who it was.
“Ottie Lee and Dale and Bud and good old Pops!” Sally Gunner hollered out at us from the middle of her cloud of dust. She had on sturdy black work boots and a wore-out-looking yellow dress fit too tightly at the shoulders.
“Ho there, angel lady,” said Bud.
“Hello, Bud!” said Sally. “You all want a ride?”
You can imagine about how long it took us to get into that vehicle, me up front next to Sally, the boys in the back on the truck planks, and a minute later we were running down the road as fast as you like.
“You come along just in time, we were getting wore out,” I said.
“I just bet you were,” Sally said.
I’d never ridden anywhere with her and I already told you she took visits from angels, but she sure knew how to drive. That truck must have been built to help fight the kaiser but she ran it straight down the road like she’d got shot out of a cannon. She had strong arms, did Sally, and when the steering wheel tried to have its way she yanked it back straight like it was nothing.
Sally and I had been in school together. That was a long stretch before she got herself hit on the head and started having her breakfasts with the winged ones. In those days, she had been sharp as a tack with her letters and sums. After my father was done with trying to sell soaps and dishes and company shares and didn’t need anyone to look after me for weeks and months at a time and I was done with the Spitzers forever, Sally and I had fallen in together and I’d played with her regular for a while. We jumped and wrestled and sang songs and caught frogs and even buttoned on the same kind of frocks a day or two and wore them to school. Then we grew up. Sally’s father, who was better than half cornroot, had been a sheep hand on a big farm. He’d got himself killed in a herding accident but not before stacking some two-by-fours in the haymow where they could drop down on someone.
“This was my daddy’s truck,” Sally said.
The truck was old and didn’t have any side windows and the boys in the back were probably holding on tight for their dear life, but now we’d get to Marvel. We’d get there and we’d get a spot and we’d see the show. It wouldn’t just be Charley Goodwin and Candy Perkins and those bloodhounds who got to go. I’d get my message. I’d see my light. Light to chase the dark. To lead me on my way. And it was Sally carrying me there. Only when we came to the Marvel turnoff, which would have meant we didn’t have more than a few miles left to go, she didn’t take it, she just kept right on. I could hear one of the boys pounding on the back window but I reckoned Sally had thought out her own way to get to Marvel and I didn’t ask her about it. One time before we’d gone our separate ways I’d played in the woods with Sally and felt lost and cried and cried for my mama who of course couldn’t come, but Sally with her beautiful sharp nose had known how to get home like we weren’t twelve-year-olds and hadn’t wandered around in the gullies for hours and been about bit to death by bugs. True again, that was before she’d had her head half caved in by a two-by-four.
“Gonna be something,” I said.
“Sure enough it is,” she said.
“I’ll bet half the whole world will be there.”
“I do hope so.”
“They was organizing buses out of Ryansville earlier.”
“You don’t say it?”
“How are those angels of yours?”
“Oh, they are fine, my goodness, yes.”
“You don’t think this is what they had in mind for me, do you? That special thing? The one Abraham Lincoln was talking about.”
“It might be!”
“’Cause I could use some light, Sally.”
“Couldn’t we all!”
“And just think, it’s you taking me, Sally. You getting me over the last stretch.”
“I suppose it is!”
“You think you could ask them some more about it?”
“Oh my goodness, no, they never talk to me after my breakfast, Ottie Lee.”
We went roaring down the road and after a while whoever it was quit banging on the back window and I thought my thoughts and swallowed down the doubt or two it was true I had about heading up to see a lynching, swallowed it straight down. I went far away off elsewhere with my thoughts, best I could, and Sally hummed, something sweet, and nothing like whistling, so that when we pulled up next to a line of cars in front of a little countryside meetinghouse it took me a minute to put it together that we hadn’t just arrived in Marvel. Matter of fact, when we stopped I was so sure we were where we weren’t that I yanked open my door, jumped outside, and said, “We’re here!”
“Here where?” said Pops.
“That there is a Quaker meetinghouse, not a lynching tree,” said Bud.
“You start talking to angels too while you was in there with her? We’re hal
fway back the way we come!” said Dale.
They were each one of them covered up in road dust and Pops was holding his hip and giving out little groans.
Sally came around the truck about as cheerful as a flamingo found itself in fresh water and said, “I reckon they’ve got started, but that’s all right, they’ll go all night.”
“Reckon who’s started what?” I said.
“Well, come on in with me and see.”
The boys looked daggers at both of us, but they followed over to the church just the same. As we rode, there at the end, I’d been getting myself ready for the riot in Marvel, for what I would see and how I would feel about it, and most of all what I would learn, so when we stepped in through the door and into that church, what we saw there came across as extra-strange. Like with those bloodhounds or Bud’s bawling, it came up so cockeyed I didn’t entirely understand what I was seeing. At first it looked like regular old bowed heads, what you might expect. Up near about a hundred of them. And not a one of them moving a twitch or pronouncing a word. Fair enough and nothing to write home to your friends and family about. Then I heard one of the boys behind me take in a hard breath and a second later I took in my own. I took it in because I’d just seen it too: the church was filled to its fat gizzards with cornsilk and cornflower folks both. Maybe even some cornroots besides Sally and corntassels too. All of them sitting next to each other like they was one great big shook salad in one great big salad bowl.