A Land More Kind Than Home (30 page)

And by God if she wasn't dead on with that.

A
FTER THE SCHOOL BUS DROPPED ME OFF ON
T
HURSDAY AFTERNOON,
I left my book bag on the porch by the front door and walked over to Joe Bill's. There wasn't nobody at home at my house, and I didn't feel like being there alone.

I rung Joe Bill's doorbell, and he flung the door open before the chimes even stopped. He stepped out onto the front porch and closed the door behind him like he didn't want me to see what he was doing inside his house.

“Hey,” he said.

“Can you play?”

“Yeah,” he said. “But you can't come inside. My mom's not home. She doesn't want nobody coming in when she ain't here.”

“All right,” I said. “What do you want to do?”

“It don't matter,” he said. He turned his head to his left and looked down the road like he was expecting to see someone. “I was just out in the backyard shooting Scooter's BB gun a few minutes ago.”

“What were you shooting at?”

“Just different things,” he said.

“Can I shoot it?”

“No,” he said. “I already put it back, and I ain't getting it out again. He'll be getting home from work pretty soon, and I don't want him catching me with it. He'd kill me if he did.”

“Whatever,” I said, but I didn't blame him. Joe Bill was scared to death of Scooter, and I was too. He was fifteen years old, but he seemed a whole lot older to me. He had a fat friend named Clay, and I was especially afraid of him because he was as dumb as a rock and that made him even more terrifying because he'd do just about anything Scooter told him to do. The two of them worked for Joe Bill's daddy down at his garage in Marshall. Joe Bill had sworn that one time he saw his brother talk Clay into eating some broken glass that somebody had busted out of the windows in an old school bus that was parked in the junk lot behind the garage. Joe Bill said Clay thought about it for a minute, and then he picked out a couple of pieces of glass from the gravel and put them in his mouth and chewed them for a while and swallowed them. Joe Bill said Clay's mouth didn't bleed or nothing. I didn't know if I believed that or not, but sometimes I thought I might.

The meanest thing I'd ever seen them do was a few years before when Joe Bill got a remote-control car for Christmas. We'd built a little ramp out in his driveway, and we were taking turns launching the car off into the grass. Scooter and Clay rode up on their bikes and watched us from out in the road. After a minute they came up the driveway and Scooter picked up that car and wouldn't give it back, and then he told Clay to jump up and down on our ramp until it broke, and it wasn't but two or three jumps before it snapped right in two because he was so fat. Joe Bill said he was going to holler for his mom, and when he did Clay picked up a baseball bat out of the carport and Scooter tossed that car up into the air and Clay swung at it like he was hitting a baseball. He busted all the wheels off the car and knocked out the batteries. It landed right in the middle of the yard, and Joe Bill went running over to it and picked it up and looked at it, and then he threw it down and ran into the house.

He left the carport door open and I could hear him crying inside, but Scooter and Clay just rode off on their bikes before Joe Bill's mom came out. I knew Joe Bill wouldn't fess up to crying about that now, but I think I probably would've cried too. That was an awfully nice car just to watch it get broken for no reason.

“Well, what do you want to do?” I asked.

“We could shoot some baskets out back,” he said.

“Okay,” I said.

T
HERE WAS A LITTLE PATCH OF DIRT IN
J
OE
B
ILL
'
S BACKYARD WHERE
his daddy had put up a basketball goal, but it really wasn't nothing but a wooden backboard with a rusty old rim nailed to it. The rim didn't even have a net on it. The court was just made of dirt, and when you bounced the ball it looked like brown smoke was rising up off the ground.

“You want to play PIG or HORSE?” Joe Bill asked. He tried to dribble the ball between his legs, but he bounced it on his foot and it rolled to the edge of the dirt before it stopped at the grass. He walked over and picked it up.

“Let's play PIG,” I said. “HORSE takes too long. It'll be dark before we're done.”

“Okay,” Joe Bill said. He took a few steps toward the basket, and then he leaned backward and tried to aim the ball like he was going to throw it over his head behind him. “Are you watching?” he asked me. “I make this one all the time.” He looked at the goal upside down and tossed the ball toward the basket with both hands. It rattled on the rim, but it didn't go in. I heard thunder rumble over the mountain behind me, and I turned to look in the direction of the sound, and I saw the clouds had started growing darker. I knew that if Mama was at home instead of at Miss Lyle's, then she would've come looking for me by now, but she wasn't there and there wasn't nobody who knew where I was right then except for Joe Bill.

“It's your shot,” he said.

“You hear that thunder?” I asked.

“The storm's still a long way off,” he said. “It's your shot.”

I carried the ball and walked away from him toward the woods, and then I turned around to see how far away I was from the basket.

“You can't make it from there!” Joe Bill hollered.

“Want to bet?” I hollered back. I held the ball up to my chin and stared at the rim like I was concentrating on it, and I thought about how far away the basket was. I walked a little closer before I took my shot. The ball rolled around the rim like it wasn't going to go in, and then it dropped into the basket.

Joe Bill caught the ball when it dropped through, and then he walked out to where I was still standing.

“Good luck,” I said.

“Whatever,” he said. He took his shot, but it bounced off the side of the rim. The ball rolled out to him and he picked it up.

“That's a
P
,” I said. Joe Bill bounced the ball once, and then he held it against his chest and brushed the dust off it. I clapped my hands for him to toss the ball to me.

“I made it,” I said. “I get another shot.” He bounced me the ball.

“What's it like having a new grandpa?” he asked me. I looked down where my shadow stretched out in the dirt in front of me, and I thought about how to answer that question. I held the basketball against my stomach and turned sideways. It made my shadow look like I was pregnant.

“He ain't new,” I said. “He's always been my grandpa.” I took a shot from where I stood, but it hit the backboard and bounced off the rim. Joe Bill chased it down and picked it up.

“But you hadn't ever met him before,” he said.

“I know,” I said. “But that don't mean he's new.”

“Have you asked him where he's been?”

“Lots of places,” I said. “But I'm not really supposed to ask about it, so don't bug me.”

“I was just wondering,” Joe Bill said. He bounced the ball a couple of times, and then he said, “What was it like when you went over to his house?”

“It was okay, I guess,” I said. “It's just a trailer.” I'd had to go out there on Tuesday after school because Daddy said I shouldn't go to the funeral home to see Stump that night, even though I told him I wanted to because I was old enough to do that kind of thing. Mama might could've talked him into it, but she wasn't there to do it. She'd been at Miss Lyle's house ever since Monday, and I hadn't even seen her except once when one of the women from church had brought her out to the house early on Tuesday morning to get some clothes before I went to school. I couldn't go to Stump's funeral either because Daddy said that he didn't want me missing school. He said he didn't even want to go to the funeral home himself because it wasn't going to be Stump laying there anyway. He said Stump had gone off to Heaven and would just be sitting up there watching the whole thing and wondering why everybody was so sad.

My grandpa's trailer sat way back up in a holler over in Shelton. On the way over there he told me it was so far up in there that it almost looked like midnight even in the morning, but when he parked his truck and we got out I realized that I could see everything just fine. His trailer was made out of metal and it had a flat roof and a couple of little steps that led up to the door. I slid my book bag off the truck's seat and slung it over my shoulder, and then I followed him up the steps. It was dark inside there when he opened the door, but then he pulled open the blinds in the front room and went into the kitchen and pulled open the blinds over the sink. The trailer smelled like it had been closed up for a long time, and I could see the dust floating through the light where the sun came in the windows.

“How long have you lived here?” I asked him.

“Just about a month or so,” he said. “But it's been mine a long, long time. I grew up on this land before I moved up to Gunter Mountain when your daddy was a little boy.” We stood there looking at each other for a second, and then he turned around and opened the refrigerator, and I could hear the sound of bottles clinking together. “You want something to eat?” he asked me. “Or a Coke or something?”

“I'm okay,” I said. I walked over and dropped my book bag on the sofa and sat down beside it. The sofa cushion was soft, and I sunk deep down into it and my book bag fell over into my lap. I picked up my book bag and sat it down on the floor and unzipped it and got out my spelling book and a pencil and some paper. I opened the book across my lap.

“You got some homework to do?” my grandpa asked.

“A little bit,” I said. He looked at my book, and then he looked out the window over the sink. He twisted the cap off the bottle of beer he'd taken out of the refrigerator.

“I'll stay out of your hair, then,” he said.

That night, after it got dark, my grandpa made a fire on the hillside behind his house, and we sat out there and roasted hot dog weenies on metal coat hangers. He didn't have any hot dog buns, and I didn't want to eat hot dogs on white bread, so we just dipped them in mustard and ketchup and ate them right off the coat hangers after they'd cooled off. He'd sat a bag of potato chips in between us and brought a two-liter of Coke up there too. He poured some Coke into my cup and then he poured some into his, and then he took a little metal flask out of his pocket and poured a little bit of that into his cup too. He'd stopped drinking beer once it had gotten dark outside, but just before we left the trailer and come up to the hill he'd taken a bottle of liquor down from the cabinet and filled the flask. He put the flask back into his pocket and took a sip of his drink. Then he leaned back and settled himself on his elbows.

“This is what men do,” he said. “You know?” I lifted my hot dog out of the flames and looked over at him, but I didn't know what to say. “This is what men have always done,” he said. “They've always been outside, underneath the stars, cooking their food over an open fire.” He took a long drink. “That's what the Indians did,” he said. “The same Indians that used to live on this land, hundreds and hundreds of years ago; they did the same thing you and me are doing now.” He looked over at me. “You feel like an Indian?” he asked.

“No,” I said. I pulled the hot dog off the end of my coat hanger. It burned my fingertips, and I sat it on my lap so it could cool off before I ate it. I opened the plastic pack of hot dogs and took out another one and stuck it on the end of the hanger. My grandfather put his hand over his mouth and then slapped his lips and hollered and made a sound like an Indian.

“I feel like an Indian,” he said. He elbowed me, and my hot dog brushed against one of the logs on the fire. Sparks rose up out of the flames and drifted up into the dark sky. He laughed. “You do it,” he said. I put my hand over my mouth and made a sound like an Indian too. “All right,” he said. “Now we're both Indians.” He finished his drink, and then he opened the bottle of Coke and poured some into his cup. “This is what men do,” he said again.

We ate those hot dog weenies and sat out there on the hill by the fire until it had just about burned itself out, and then he let me go up into the woods behind us and find some sticks to put on the fire. I knew that Daddy had told him to make sure that I went to bed on time because I had school the next day, and I knew it was already way past my bedtime by then, but we just sat out there on that hill and looked at the fire.