A Painted House (10 page)

Doyle was about to be slaughtered. Though there was nothing fair about it, it was simply the risk you ran if you fought a Sisco. The hill people were silent, and the locals watched without taking a step forward.

Then the two Siscos dragged Doyle to his feet, and with all the patience of an executioner, Jerry kicked him in the groin. Doyle screamed and dropped to the ground. The Siscos were delirious with laughter.

The Siscos were in the process of picking him up again when Mr. Hank Spruill, he of the tree-trunk neck, stepped out from the crowd and hit Jerry hard, causing him to fall. Quick as a cat, Billy Sisco threw a left jab that popped Hank in the jaw, but a curious thing happened. The jab didn’t faze Hank Spruill. He turned around and grabbed Billy by his hair and without any apparent effort spun him around and flung him into the grouping of Siscos in the crowd. From the strewn pack came a new Sisco, Bobby, aged no more than sixteen, but just as mean as his brothers.

Three Siscos against Hank Spruill.

As Jerry was getting to his feet, Hank, with unbelievable speed, kicked him in the ribs so hard that we heard cracking. Then Hank turned and slapped Bobby
with the back of his hand, knocking him down, and kicked him in the teeth. By this time Billy was making another lunge, and Hank, like a circus strongman, lifted the much skinnier boy into the air and flipped him into the side of the Co-op, where he crashed loudly, rattling the boards and windows, before falling to the pavement on his head. I couldn’t have tossed a baseball any easier.

When Billy hit the ground, Hank took him by the throat and dragged him back into the center of the arena, where Bobby was on all fours, struggling to get to his feet. Jerry was crumpled to one side, clutching his ribs and whimpering.

Hank kicked Bobby between the legs. When the boy yelped, Hank let out a hideous laugh.

He then clutched Billy by the throat and began lashing his face with the back of his right hand. Blood was spurting everywhere; it covered Billy’s face and was pouring down his chest.

Finally, Hank released Billy and turned to the rest of the Siscos. “Anybody want some more!” he shouted. “Come on! Get you some!”

The other Siscos cowered behind one another while their three heroes floundered in the dirt.

The fight should’ve been over, but Hank had other plans. With delight and deliberation, he kicked each of the three in their faces and heads until they stopped moving and groaning. The crowd began to disperse.

“Let’s go,” a man said from behind me. “You kids don’t need to see this.” But I couldn’t move.

Then Hank found a broken piece of an old two-by-four. For a moment the crowd stopped its exit to watch with morbid curiosity.

When Hank hit Jerry across the nose, someone in the crowd said, “Oh my God.”

Another voice in the mob said something about finding the sheriff.

“Let’s get outta here,” an old farmer said, and the crowd began leaving again, this time a little quicker.

Hank still wasn’t finished. His face was red with anger; his eyes flashed like a demon’s. He kept pounding them until the old two-by-four began to shatter into small pieces.

I didn’t see any of the other Spruills in the crowd. As the beating became a butchering, everyone fled. No one in Black Oak wanted to tangle with the Siscos. And now nobody wanted to face this madman from the hills.

When we were back on the sidewalk, those of us who’d seen the fight were silent. It was still happening. I wondered if Hank would beat them until they were dead.

Neither Dewayne nor I said a word as we darted through the crowd and ran toward the movie house.

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The Saturday afternoon movie was a special time for all of us farm kids. We didn’t have televisions, and entertainment was considered sinful. For two hours we were transported from the harshness of life in the cotton patch to a fantasy land where the good guys always won. Through the movies we learned how criminals operated, how cops caught them, how wars were fought and won, how history was made in the Wild West. It was even through a movie that I learned the
sad truth that the South had, in fact, not won the Civil War, contrary to what I’d been told both at home and at school.

But this Saturday the Gene Autry western bored Dewayne and me. Every time there was a fistfight on the screen, I thought of Hank Spruill and could see him still out there behind the Co-op hammering the Siscos. Autry’s scuffles were tame compared to the real-life carnage we’d just witnessed. The movie was almost over before I mustered the courage to tell Dewayne.

“That big hillbilly we saw beat the Siscos?” I whispered. “He’s working on our farm.”

“You know him?” he whispered back, disbelieving.

“Yep. Know him real well.”

Dewayne was impressed and wanted to ask more questions, but the place was packed and Mr. Starnes, the manager, enjoyed patrolling the aisles with his flashlight, just looking for trouble. Any kid caught talking would be yanked up by the ear and ejected. Also, Brenda with the freckles had managed to get the seat directly behind Dewayne, making us both uncomfortable.

There were a few adults sprinkled throughout the audience, but they were mostly town people. Mr. Starnes made the Mexicans sit in the balcony, but it didn’t seem to bother them. Only a handful would waste money on a picture show.

We rushed out at the end, and within minutes we were behind the Co-op again, half-expecting to see the bloody corpses of the Sisco boys. But no one was there. There was no evidence of any fight—no blood, no limbs, no shattered two-by-four.

Pappy held the opinion that people with self-respect
should leave town on Saturday before dark. Bad things happened on Saturday night. Other than the fights, though, I’d never witnessed any true evil. I’d heard there were drinking and dice games behind the gin, and even more fights, but all that was kept out of sight and was engaged in by very few people. Still, Pappy was afraid we’d somehow be contaminated.

Ricky was the hell-raiser of the Chandler family, and my mother told me that he had the reputation of staying in town too long on Saturday. There was an arrest somewhere in the recent family history, but I could never get the details. She said that Pappy and Ricky had fought for years over what time they should leave. I could remember several occasions when we left without him. I’d cry because I was sure I’d never see him again, then Sunday morning he would be sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee as if nothing had happened. Ricky always came home.

We met at the truck, which was now surrounded by dozens of other vehicles parked haphazardly around the Baptist church because the farmers were still rolling in. The crowd was thicker along Main Street and seemed to be congregating near the school, where fiddlers and banjo pickers sometimes broke out into bluegrass sessions. I didn’t want to leave, and in my opinion there was no hurry to get home.

Gran and my mother had some last-minute business inside the church, where most of the women found something to do on the day before the Sabbath. From the other side of the truck, I overheard my dad and Pappy talking about a fight. Then I heard the name Sisco, and I became very still. Miguel and some of the
Mexicans arrived and wouldn’t stop chattering in Spanish, so I missed any further gossip.

A few minutes later, Stick Powers, one of Black Oak’s two deputies, walked over from the street and said hello to Pappy and my father. Stick was supposed to have been a POW in the war, and he walked with a limp, which he claimed was the result of abuse in a German camp. Pappy said he’d never left Craighead County, never heard a shot fired in anger.

“One of them Sisco boys is near ’bout dead,” I heard him say as I moved in closer. It was almost dark now, and no one was watching me.

“Nothing wrong with that,” Pappy said.

“They say that hillbilly is working out at your place.”

“I didn’t see the fight, Stick,” Pappy said, his quick temper already rising. “You got a name?”

“Hank something or other.”

“We got lots of somethings and others.”

“Mind if I ride out tomorrow and look around?” Stick asked.

“I can’t stop you.”

“No, you can’t.” Stick wheeled on his good leg and gave the Mexicans a look as if they were guilty as sin.

I eased around to the other side of the truck and said, “What was that all about?”

As usual, when it was something I was not supposed to know or hear, they simply ignored me.

We rode home in the dark, the lights of Black Oak fading behind us, the cool wind from the road blowing our hair. At first, I wanted to tell my father about the fight, but I couldn’t do it in front of the Mexicans.
Then I decided not to be a witness. I wouldn’t tell anybody since there was no way to win. Any involvement with the Siscos would make my life dangerous, and I didn’t want the Spruills to get mad and leave. The picking had hardly begun, and I was already tired of it. And most important, I didn’t want Hank Spruill angry with me or my father or Pappy.

Their old truck was not in our front yard when we arrived home. They were still in town, probably visiting with other hill people.

After supper, we took our places on the porch as Pappy fiddled with his radio. The Cardinals were at Philadelphia, playing under the lights. Musial came to bat in the top of the second, and I began to dream.

Chapter 8

We awoke at dawn Sunday to the crack of lightning and the rumble of low thunder. A storm blew from the southwest, delaying sunrise, and as I lay in the darkness of Ricky’s room, I again asked the great question of why it rained on Sundays. Why not during the week, so I wouldn’t be forced to pick cotton? Sunday was already a day of rest.

My grandmother came for me and told me to sit on the porch so we could watch the rain together. She fixed my coffee, mixing it with plenty of milk and sugar, and we rocked gently in the swing as the wind howled. The Spruills were scurrying about, throwing things in boxes, trying to find shelter away from their leaking tents.

The rain fell in waves, as if trying to make up for two weeks of dry weather. A mist swirled around the porch like a fog, and above us the tin roof sang under the torrents.

Gran carefully picked her moments to speak. There were times, usually once a week, when she would take me for a walk, or meet me on the porch, just the two of us. Because she’d been married to Pappy for thirty-five years, she’d learned the art of silence. She could walk or swing for long periods of time while saying little.

“How’s the coffee?” she asked, barely audible above the storm.

“It’s fine, Gran,” I said.

“What would you like for breakfast?”

“Biscuits.”

“Then I’ll make us some biscuits.”

The Sunday routine was a little more relaxed. We generally slept later, though the rain had awakened us early today. And for breakfast we skipped the usual eggs and ham and somehow managed to survive on biscuits and molasses. The kitchen work was a little lighter. It was, after all, a day of rest.

The swing moved slowly back and forth, going nowhere, its rusty chains squeaking softly above us. Lightning popped across the road, somewhere on the Jeter property.

“I had a dream about Ricky last night,” she said.

“A good dream?”

“Yes, very good. I dreamed the war suddenly ended, but they forgot to tell us. And one night we were sitting here on the porch, listening to the radio, and out there on the road we saw a man running toward us. It was Ricky. He was in his army uniform, and he started yelling about the war being over.”

“I wish I could have a dream like that,” I said.

“I think the Lord’s telling us something.”

“Ricky’s coming home?”

“Yes. Maybe not right away, but the war’ll be over soon. We’ll look up one day and see him walking across the yard there.”

I looked at the yard. Puddles and streams were beginning to form and run down toward the Spruills.
The grass was almost gone, and the wind was blowing the first of the dead leaves from our oaks.

“I pray for Ricky every night, Gran,” I said, quite proud.

“I pray for him every hour,” she said, with a hint of mist in her eyes.

We rocked and watched the rain. My thoughts about Ricky were rarely of a soldier in uniform, with a gun, under fire, hopping from one safe place to another. Rather, my memories were of my best friend, my uncle who was more like a brother, a buddy with a fishing pole or a baseball glove. He was only nineteen, an age that seemed both old and young to me.

Before long my mother came to the door. The Saturday bath was followed by the Sunday scrubbing, a quick but brutal ritual in which my neck and ears were scraped by a woman possessed. “We need to get ready,” she said. I could already feel the pain.

I followed Gran to the kitchen for more coffee. Pappy was at the kitchen table, reading the Bible and preparing his Sunday school lesson. My father was on the back porch, watching the storm and gazing into the distance at the river, no doubt beginning to worry that floodwaters were coming.

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The rains stopped long before we left for church. The roads were muddy, and Pappy drove even slower than usual. We puttered along, sometimes sliding in the ruts and puddles of the old dirt road. My father and I were in the back, holding tightly to the sides of the
bed, and my mother and Gran rode up front, everybody dressed in their best. The sky had cleared, and now the sun was overhead, already baking the wet ground so that you could see the humidity drifting lazily above the cotton stalks.

“It’s gonna be a hot one,” my father said, issuing the same forecast he uttered every day from May through September.

When we reached the highway, we stood and leaned on the cab so the wind was in our faces. It was much cooler that way. The fields were vacant; not even the Mexicans were allowed to work on the Sabbath. Every harvest season brought the same rumors of heathen farmers sneaking around and picking cotton on Sunday, but I personally had never witnessed such sinful behavior.

Most things were sinful in rural Arkansas, especially if you were a Baptist. And a great part of our Sunday worship ritual was to be preached at by the Reverend Akers, a loud and angry man who spent too much of his time conjuring up new sins. Of course, I didn’t care for the preaching—most kids didn’t—but there was more to Sunday church than worship. It was a time for visiting, and spreading news and gossip. It was a festive gathering, with everyone in good spirits, or at least pretending to be. Whatever the worries of the world—the coming floods, the war in Korea, the fluctuating price of cotton—they were all put aside during church.