Body and Bread (2 page)

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1. Happiness is primarily an attitude.

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2. Even Moses was punished when he made his one mistake.

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3. Problems can be corrected through a systematic identification of facts.

Although I couldn’t give a reason for not saying
sometimes you scare me
, I always kept silent.

Sam approached, pulling back the horse’s lip. “Is his mouth cut?”

“No, boy,” our father said, pushing Sam’s hands. “Go see if Gran needs help unloading the car.”

“Where’s Norine?” my grandfather asked, waving in her direction. “Hey, girl, I’d like to see you ride,” he shouted.

Sam frowned then turned toward the creek.

My mother squatted at the bank. She wore a frayed straw hat and looked through cat’s-eye sunglasses over her shoulder, swatted the air twice then turned back.

She’d bragged that her name appeared by itself on the farm deed. While my father was overseas tending wounded soldiers during the war, she’d moved in with my grandparents and scrimped each month to pay the token fifteen-dollar mortgage before buying necessities for herself, Kurt, who was a baby then, and Sam, who arrived a few months after our father left. “Investment,” my grandfather had reminded her. “Consider it my thanks to a son’s faithful wife.”

Now, as he watched her, the horse nudged him off balance. He shoved back, and the animal thumped its rear hooves, yanked its head.

“Ho,” my father said, holding out his hand. I wondered if he always believed Granddaddy was right. Would he do
anything
his father asked? I hoped not.

“You go then,” my grandfather said, his face red, puckered. “Get Hugh, there, and convince me I wasn’t wrong to pay good money for that sorry piece of horse flesh.”

“Yes, sir,” my father said, calling Hugh.

“I’m checking the peach trees,” my grandfather said to no one in particular as he waded through broomgrass toward a small orchard my father had planted on the other side of the road.

Once he’d plopped Hugh behind the saddle horn, my father swung up, their bodies snug in the leather seat. “That way,” Hugh said, signaling toward the barn. “Cows. Daddy, hurry.” He waved as they swayed with each of the horse’s steps, their hips ticking right, then left.

My mother strolled toward a mass of vines below the train trestle, then disappeared, collecting mustang grapes in a coffee can. My grandmother headed for evening primroses clustered next to a crepe myrtle.

“We don’t like lemonade, I hope you didn’t bring lemonade,” Sam said as my grandmother snapped flower stems, discarding all but perfect blooms.

“Whoever perished, being innocent?” she said, pity shaping a smile, a typical condescension whose source was mysterious. Then she sang, her reedy voice garbling lyrics, except in the occasional clear note, the words “blessing” and “thou.”

“Last one to the water—” Kurt yelled; then he, Sam, and I raced each other to the creek. My brothers had worn bathing suits under their jeans, so they peeled off their pants, left them on the bank. Stripped to my panties, I stepped into the cool water, and Sam dove past me into the shadowed depths. Kurt soaked me with a cannonball dive. Fine silt blackened our bottoms as we slid from algae-slick rocks to mud soft as feathers. If I stood flat-footed in the small swimming hole, the top just covered my head. We slapped water at each other, and I barely escaped their pinches and efforts to push me under.

We forgot we were two boys and one girl with rules we’d learned about how one should behave with the other. Just three children in the water and mud, our tanned arms and legs gleaming, sharp stones pricking our toughened feet. Every so often, one of us called another’s name, and these shouts, mixed with giggling and thwaps of splashed water, echoed back toward our mother, father, grandparents.

By the time my grandfather had returned to the table with a basket of peaches, we’d put on our jeans again, and we raced toward him. My grandmother joined us, strands of gray hair stuck to her damp face. Kurt and Sam threw their pits at each other as our father and Hugh came riding up.

“
I
want one,” Hugh cried, reaching toward the basket, slipping, tumbling to the ground. He whimpered, clutching his arm; my father stepped down.

“Guess we could amputate, just about
here
,” he teased, the side of his hand slicing above Hugh’s elbow.

“No,” Hugh whined, rubbing. “It’s okay, honest.”

We laughed and shoved him, but our father’s message was clear.

My grandfather took the horse’s reins in one hand and used his other to motion again in wide arcs. “Now, Norine, I’d like to see what
you
can do.”

She’d gathered stalks of purple horsemint and wispy old man’s beard in a peanut butter jar and was leaning over the table, but she stopped, her arm a warning flag. “No. Thank you,” she said, her words heavy as the heat, and set down the flowers.

My grandfather dropped his hand and watched her poking her arrangement. “Now, Miss Norine, come on, girl.” He stroked the horse’s neck. “No reason to be afraid. He’s a thoroughbred, but a baby could handle him.”

My mother stiffened. Only her head turned. “It’s not that I
can’t
ride him,” she said. “I just don’t care to right now.” She rubbed the table with a cloth.

My grandfather stood, a corner of his shirttail hanging, and removed his fedora, then wiped his forehead with his sleeve. We all grew still. “You want everybody to think you can’t ride a little ol’ horse, I guess that’s your business.” He replaced his hat, pushing it back, not looking at her.

She faced us—her straw hat’s brim a halo, her sunglasses white horns. She marched over, reached toward my grandfather, snatched the reins, and swung onto the saddle.

My hands went to my mouth. I winced, ready to cover my eyes.

Leaning right, she flicked her heels. The horse twirled, cantered, then galloped toward the trestle at a high speed. At the edge of the field she turned, hunched into the wind, and aimed at us, her finish line. As the horse gathered speed, its rocking gait smoothed into a streak. When they stopped, dust and dirt kicked our feet. Dismounting, my mother tossed the reins back at my grandfather. “I
told
you I could ride him,” she said through clenched teeth. “What I said was that I didn’t want to.”

“Yeah, she told
you
,” Sam whooped.

But to me, a child whose world was still family, my mother’s defiance was like cursing God in the middle of a sermon. I’d never seen anyone, particularly a woman, talk to my grandfather like she had. Even Gran called him Dr. Pelton, and she never questioned anything he said or talked back. Neither did my father. The church taught about resurrected saints, betrayals in the garden, so I knew that committing a sin was scary; Dad’s switch had proved it. But this time, I knew my grandfather was wrong, and, sin or no sin, I wanted to tell him that, but couldn’t.

My grandfather slapped his leg with his hat then repositioned it. He led the horse toward the creek for a drink. My mother rolled up the cuffs of Hugh’s jeans then gave a hugging laugh while patting his bottom. Why wasn’t my grandfather mad? Had my mother known she could talk to him like that? Maybe there were times when rules could be broken. But which ones, and how? At least, now, I knew to ask.

“Sam, I need my number one helper. Over here, please,” my grandmother called. “Will you carry some things from the car?” She brushed a damp curl from her forehead.

“Only if I can hold your hand,” Sam said, clutching hers. My father, my mother, and Hugh followed them to the Cadillac.

I escaped with Kurt upstream, our cane fishing poles in tow. We guided our rods between trees, past clumps of scrub and brushwood, leaving behind the adults and my questions. Insects dotted the stream’s surface, bringing perch and bass up from the bottoms, but Kurt, as usual, lost patience. A typical firstborn, he conjured images of snappy salutes, troops marching in coordinated steps. He’d forgotten his glasses again, so his face wrinkled from habit into an ornery squint. “These fish are either stone dead or geniuses,” he said, frowning, flipping his line back and forth.

When Sam appeared, he slid my hook through the back of a cricket he’d found under a rock, then swung his own line next to the far bank. “Over there, Sar,” he said, pointing at a quiet water hole to the left. I aimed, then consulted his broad, full-lipped face. He nodded.

Unlike Kurt’s tight-cornered ways, Sam had an impish quality, like a pet parrot that flirts while maneuvering to snatch someone’s food. His laugh was a high-pitched giggle that wrenched from his body like a spasm, his face all creases and teeth, his arms flailing until he hugged his stomach. He loved to talk, though his conversation was never easy. At any moment, he might do something that I had to think about.

“I swear they got a bead on my hook,” Kurt said, plopping his worm farther right.

Sam and I watched for movement in our lines, while Kurt wiped his forehead, fidgeted. Sam signaled for me to look past our brother. A turtle, head wagging, floated on the murky surface then went under, small waves spreading, fading.

“Hey, Kurt,” Sam called, “your fishing’s so bad, you got an audience,” and he jerked his head toward the turtle. Even though they occasionally wrestled, sometimes punching each other, today Sam’s smile was an arm around Kurt’s shoulder.

“Man!” Kurt said, dropping his pole, scrambling toward the floating creature. He reached into the dirt near his feet, then tossed and skipped rocks one after another, plunking them near the bobbing target.

The turtle had greenish skin and a shell covered in algae. It paddled its webbed feet and sometimes flipped a tail that bore scales like a crest.

“Stupid!” Sam stifled a shout. “You’re scaring the fish.”

“They’re spooked anyhow,” Kurt said, biting his lip, reaching a stick toward the turtle as it passed in front of him.

He poked, and the creature gazed, stunned, then dipped its wobbly head. “Kurt, stop. I’ll call Mama,” I whined, running toward him. I shoved him and tried to grab the stick.

Kurt raised his elbow, blocking my waving arm, a buzzing he barely noticed. He squinted, jabbed again. This time, the turtle yanked its head and snapped its jaws onto the stick, cracking it. Sam stood next to me, clasping his sides, laughing.

“You’re hurting him. Leave him alone,” I shouted, almost crying.

Kurt skipped a pebble off the animal’s shell, and Sam frowned, staring, his gaze like a cranky conscience.

I turned to run, but a terrible thud made me stop. My grandfather had yanked the horse’s reins then made my father’s face go blank, and later he’d forced my mother to ride when she’d said she didn’t want to. Now Kurt and Sam were throwing rocks at a turtle. I pictured them cackling, leaning toward the water, the turtle belly-up, its legs flopping. Sam disappointed me most; I’d thought of him as a person who couldn’t hurt anything without a good reason.

Somebody called my name, and when I turned, Sam stood by the cattle trail, motioning me over. As mad as I was, I couldn’t resist his singling me out; we left our poles on the bank and wandered upstream, hidden from the others by juniper, Arkansas cane, the creek’s curve. Stepping in time with him, his breaths whispery, even, I trusted that he’d explain his meanness.

“Stay here,” he said and waded into the creek. He stopped and stared into the darkness. This time, his breathing hardly raised his chest. Only his eyes moved, following some creature below as it passed. Another turtle? The two middle fingers on his left hand twitched. Cicadas rattled like tambourines, the stream pattered across rocks, mosquitoes whirled.

Sam’s hands pierced the surface and fell deep, the water above his elbows. I ran to the edge; the toes of my tennis shoes sank into silt. He lurched backward, then tossed the creature and a tunnel of water forward; drops fanned around his head, thumping as they splashed.

Almost a foot long, the fish flopped, slithering in the muddy shallow. When I reached him, Sam held the fish while its mouth yawned then closed, and the tail curled like a tongue, the body all muscle as it jerked, flipping in my brother’s hands.

I imagined the bass, with its green back, black side-stripes, and orange circles around popping eyes, flopping between my own fingers, wanting its cool home.

“Daddy and Granddaddy cut open bodies so they can see the stuff inside,” Sam said. He crouched on the bank, reached into his pocket.

I bent next to him but pressed my fists to my chest. The fish’s gills fluttered.

“I saw you watching all them.” He motioned with his head back toward the others as he withdrew a knife, pulled out its blade with his teeth. “Don’t let it get to you. We’re not like that.” His eyes peered into mine. “I want you to see this. Can you take it?” When I nodded, he knelt as he slid the steel into the anus, then sliced forward through white belly, splintering ribs. The wafer-like flaps still puffed as he cut through them on either side. He laid the knife next to his knee and pulled back on the head, cracking bones, then yanked it off. He set the head next to his knife; one orange-haloed eye stared at sky.