Carry Me Home (2 page)

It’s the best night ever, with that titty moon shining over us as we drink our beers and warm our naked feet close to the fire ’til it’s almost morning. And, dumb as I am, I think that these good days are gonna last forever.

Chapter 2

I
wasn’t always simpleminded. Ma says when I was a bitty baby, I was smart as a whip, my big brown eyes always busy. But then I got real sick with a bad fever that baked my brain and about killed me dead. Ma said after that fever was gone, my brain was like meat cooked too long, and it just fell apart whenever I tried to learn something new. “But, Earl, there’s no point in crying over spilt milk,” Ma said. I ain’t exactly sure what spilt milk got to do with that fever, but one thing I do know for sure is that I’m glad that fever got me, and not that goddamn polio. Jimmy says that polio is some wicked shit. It freezes your whole body from your neck to your feet and leaves you either crippled or dead. The President is crippled up from the polio, so he’s gotta get around in a wheelchair ’cause his legs are freezed. Dad says he knows this for a fact, even if them newspapers never show him in a chair, ’cause Dad’s friend, Delbert Larson, met a big-timey reporter for
The
Milwaukee
Journal
who said he saw it with his own eyes. One thing I know for sure is I’d rather have my brain baked any day than have my whole body freezed. I might be dumb as a stump, and I might look sorta skinny, but I’m real strong and I’m a fast runner, ’cause I got feet that are big and straight, not all buckled up from the polio.

Fast runner that I am, there ain’t no running away from Ma when Jimmy and me get back from sucker fishing. She’s sitting at the kitchen table and it’s dark in the room ’cause the light from the new sun ain’t crawled inside the house yet. She snaps the light on and about scares the shit outta me. She is wearing her robe and she’s got them pin curls stuck to her head.

She eyes up my clothes that are splotched with mud, and without even looking at Jimmy, she tells him to go up to his room so she can yell at me. Well, she don’t say so she can yell at me, but I know that’s what she means.

Jimmy, he holds on to the wall and he uses a heel to wedge off his shoe, ’cause he’s all wobbly from beers. “Ah, Ma, don’t give Earwig a hard time now. It’s my fault. I took him even though I knew he wasn’t supposed to go.”

“Go upstairs, Jimmy, and get cleaned up before your father wakes up.” There ain’t no mad in Ma’s voice when she talks to Jimmy. Ma never gets mad at Jimmy.

Ma tells me to sit down at the table.

“Earl, do you understand why I told you you couldn’t go anyplace for a good long time?” Ma is looking at me real hard, her blue eyes skittering back and forth, looking first at one of my eyeballs, then at the other, probably on accounta my lazy eye.

“Yeah,” I say. “’Cause I axed Mrs. Pritchard.” I am picking at the legs of my pants like I always do when I’m scared of getting my ears boxed. Something gunky gets on my fingers, and I hope to hell it ain’t sucker guts.

Ma sighs like she’s just plumb tired out. She rubs the sides of her face with her fingertips. “Go wash up, Earl, and change your clothes. I don’t care if you boys didn’t get one minute of sleep, you’re both going to work. I will not have people thinking that Eileen Gunderman raises irresponsible children. And, Earl,” she says, “I’ve agreed to pay Mrs. Pritchard’s doctor bill and the wages of a high-school girl to do her cooking and cleaning until she’s back on her feet. That means you’ll be working extra hard over the next few weeks to make that money back. Nothing’s free in this life, Earl. We always pay for our mistakes. Remember that.”

Ma sees to it that I remember too. By noon, I’m wishing she was one of those mean kinda mas, ’cause then she woulda just taked a willow stick and whipped the shit outta me and got it over with quick. Instead, she makes me work and work and work ’til I’m about ready to drop dead.

I’m on the back porch stuffing greasy work clothes into the wash machine when Eddie comes peddling his bike, all wibblety-wobblety, down the sidewalk. He’s got an empty pail rocking from the handlebars. “Hey, Earlwig,” he says. Eddie calls me “Earlwig” even though I’ve told him about a million times that it’s “Earwig.”

“Hey, Eddie,” I say. Eddie’s got sparkly cinnamon and sugar smeared across his cheek.

“The frogs been croaking, so they probably laid their eggs by now. Want to go to the swamp and get some tadpoles?”

“I know they’re croaking,” I say. “I was at the millpond last night spearing suckers with Jimmy and the guys, and I heared ’em. I speared myself a big-ass sucker too.” I stand all big and tall when I say this, ’cause Eddie, he’s just a little kid, and he can’t do that grown-up guy stuff yet.

I scoop a pair of soapy pants onto the end of my stick and feed ’em into the wringer part of the washer. “Watch this, Eddie,” I say. “There’s a man in these pants and he’s gonna get squished.” I crank the handle, and those pants move between the rollers. Soap and muddy water squishes and bubbles up out of ’em. “Look, that’s his blood and guts getting squished out of him!” I start screaming then, like I’m the man who’s getting squished. Eddie, he don’t laugh, though. He just blinks, scratches at a skeeter bite on his hand, and asks me again if I want to go fetch tadpoles.

If you turn at Sam’s Barber Shop and go down that street a couple a blocks, you come to the swamp that has tadpoles in it every spring. Them little eggs are clear and all clumped together, sticking to the grass close to the bank. Inside each of them eggs is a black little dot, and that would be the tadpole, all round like a rolled booger. If that dot inside that jelly part is white, then you might as well leave them eggs right there, ’cause there ain’t gonna be no tadpoles hatching outta those. Then they’re gonna start to rotting and stinking and your ma is gonna yell at you to get rid of ’em.

So you get the good ones, the ones with the nice black dots inside, and you take ’em home in a pail of swamp water, and you put ’em by the shed or somewhere where the sun ain’t gonna bake ’em. In time, them little tadpoles, they hatch and go skittering around in that pail. Then one day them little tadpoles grow bumps, some in the front and some outta their ass end, right close up by their tails. Then their tails just disappear. It’s the damnedest thing, but I shit you not. In time, those tadpoles turn right into frogs or toads, just like magic.

“I can’t go, Eddie,” I say.

“How come you can’t go?” Eddie asks.

“’Cause I can’t leave the yard today.”

“How come you can’t leave the yard today, Earlwig?”

If there’s one thing that gets on my nerves about Eddie (besides that he calls me “Earlwig”), it would be that he asks too many goddamn questions.

“’Cause I did something bad, that’s why.” I grab the squished man as he falls from the wringer and plop him into the clothes basket. I point and tell Eddie, “That’s the squished man’s casket.”

“What did you do bad, Earlwig?”

“I chopped Mrs. Pritchard’s leg with an ax, and I went fishing at the millpond.”

“Why’d you do that, Earlwig?” The more I talk about it, the more I see that blood squirting out of Pritchard’s leg, and that makes me want to scoop Eddie up with my stick and run him through the goddamn wringer so he shuts up.

“Beat it, Eddie,” I say, just like Jimmy says to me when he’s got his girlfriend, Molly, around and wants to kiss on her or grab her titties.

Eddie scratches at the sugar on his face like it’s tickling him now, shrugs, then props his foot on the pedal of his bike. “You want me to bring you some tadpoles then, Earlwig?” When he says that, I feel kinda bad for even thinking of running little Eddie through the wringer.

“Yeah, Eddie,” I say, “that would be real nice. Get the ones that are black inside.” Eddie nods, then pedals away.

Chapter 3

T
hat store at the south end of Main Street, the one with a house stuck on the back and folded up over the top, that would be our store. Gunderman’s Grocery, it’s called. Out front there’s tall glass windows and a wide cement porch with six steps. There’s bent pipes to hold on to when you walk up ’em if you’re old or crippled up from the polio. Ma’s proud of our modern store, ’cause it don’t got the stuff behind the counter so the customer’s gotta ask you to fetch it. It’s all right there on the shelves where people can grab stuff for themselves, just like at the big Piggly Wiggly stores in the city.

After Ma gets old and dead, I’m gonna take over the store, so I gotta learn how to work it. That’s what Ma says. She’s been teaching me how to work the store ever since that skinny-minny teacher kicked me outta school, saying I was getting too big for the third grade. Ma teached me how to stack the canned goods so they don’t come crashing down on some poor little kid’s head, and she teached me how many brown paper bags to stack under the counter at a time, so when she goes to grab one, the whole shitload of ’em don’t fall on her feet. She showed me, too, how to line up bottles of Milk of Magnesia, Bayer aspirin, and Mother’s Remedy, so the labels show toward the counter where the ladies can see ’em right off when they come in ’cause someone in their family is feeling punky or looking peaked.

I’m gonna run the store one day, and Jimmy, he’s gonna take over Dad’s gas station. The Skelly station is at the other end of Main Street, smack dab on the corner. It’s got a big garage where him and Jimmy fix broked cars, and it’s got a little room where people come in to pay at the counter. I wish I could take over the Skelly station when the folks get dead instead of Gunderman’s Grocery, ’cause I sure do like the Skelly. There’s tires and junk parts stacked all over the floor along the walls, and lots of greasy tools that make clinkity-clankity noises when you dig ’em out of the toolboxes. At the Skelly, them oilcans don’t gotta be stacked all neat and tidy, label sides out, either. Dad stacks ’em any which way and he don’t even care when one of ’em comes crashing to the floor when the door gets slammed too hard. The best thing about the Skelly, though, is that you ain’t gotta mind your Ps and Qs there. If there ain’t no ladies in paying for their gas, you can burp, fart, cuss, or scratch yourself wherever you gotta, and ain’t nobody gonna bitch at you.

Ma says I can’t inherit the garage ’cause I don’t know how to fix cars. Jimmy, though, he’s the best goddamn mechanic in town. That’s what folks in Willowridge say, anyway, and that don’t surprise me none. Jimmy is the best at everything. Well, ’cept at stocking shelves. Jimmy says he ain’t never been good at that, like I am.

Even though Jimmy’s good at fixing things, he tells me when we’re alone that he don’t wanna work in the Skelly ’til hell freezes over. Used to be, he wanted to pitch for the Chicago Cubs. Jimmy’s a damn good pitcher too. Most folks in town came to see him play when he was still in high school. When he cranked that arm back and threw the ball, you didn’t even see it whiz through the air. You just heared the slap noise it made in the catcher’s mitt. I don’t know if Jimmy still wants to play for the Cubs. All I know is that he wants to get outta this hick town.

Even though I’d rather work at the Skelly, when Ma starts heaping extra chores on me on accounta what I did to Mrs. Pritchard, working in the store don’t sound so bad.

Just like on the last two Monday mornings since I axed Pritchard, Ma brings the laundry baskets to the back porch and I gotta fill up that damn wash machine and wash the clothes. This morning, it’s one of them nice, sunny spring days, warm enough that my fingers don’t sting when I get ’em wet, at least.

When the clothes are washed and squished, I go tell Ma like she told me to. She tells me to watch over the store while she runs out and hangs the clothes up to dry. Ma don’t let me hang clothes, ’cause she says I bunch ’em up and wrinkle ’em worse, and ’cause I always hang her raggedy things on the outside lines where the ladies who come into the store can see ’em.

I wait in the store behind the counter. When Eva Leigh comes into the store, I stand real straight and say, “Morning, Mrs. Leigh,” real polite, just like I will when I get the store. Eva Leigh’s got her hip all poked out so Luke Junior, who she calls LJ, don’t fall on the floor when she carries him. He’s slobbering all over her blouse.

“Morning, Earl,” she says, real nice. Eva Leigh’s only about Jimmy’s age, I know, ’cause once I heard her tell Ma that she woulda graduated from high school in ’37 too, if she hadn’t dropped out. Same age or not, she don’t look young as Jimmy. She’s got lines on her face that look like scars from kitty scratches, and she walks drooped over like a picked flower. Ma says that’s ’cause Eva is married to Luke Leigh, who is as mean and nasty as a bull and, like the rest of the Leighs, as worthless as a three-dollar bill. Sometimes when I’m stacking shelves or dusting, Eva Leigh comes in and talks to Ma about her mean, nasty husband. Ma’s face gets all droopy when she listens to Eva Leigh, then after she listens a spell, she gives Eva Leigh advice on how to keep Luke from being so ornery. She gives her little things she calls “tips” on how to get that house cleaned, lickety-split, and she tells her what time she’s gotta stick the potatoes and carrots in with the pot roast so supper will be done when Luke gets home from work.

Eva Leigh don’t look at me when she says, “I need a can of Copenhagen, Earl.” I like how Eva Leigh don’t shout when she talks to me, like a lot of people do, like they don’t know the difference between simpleminded and plain-ass deaf.

I’m hoping Eva Leigh needs more than a can of snuff, ’cause if she don’t, then I’m gonna have to check her out. I’m real good at pressing them numbers on the till, but I ain’t so good at giving change. Ma showed me lots of times what each of them monies is called and what they’re worth, but I think it’s my lazy eye that keeps me from seeing it right. I don’t care how many times she tells me that a dime is bigger than a nickel, it don’t look that way to me.

Eva Leigh starts walking around the store, touching cans and boxes as she goes, but she don’t pick nothing up. “Where’s your ma, Earl?” she finally asks as she hoists LJ up higher on her poked-out hip. I tell her Ma go’ed out back to hang up laundry. Then I get to thinking maybe she’s asking ’cause she’s scared I’m gonna ax her like I did Mrs. Pritchard, so I hold up my hands and say, “I don’t got no ax today, Mrs. Leigh.”

Eva Leigh turns to me and smiles, but her smile don’t look happy. When I see her whole face, I see she’s got a big bruise right over her cheek. It’s purple and yellow and gets me to thinking about how those ain’t real pretty colors when mixed together on a lady’s face. She tips her head back down, real quick, and her sand-colored hair that Luke says don’t need curling slides across her cheeks and hangs there like closed curtains.

“It’s all right, Earl. I know you wouldn’t hurt anyone on purpose.”

“No, ma’am, I sure wouldn’t,” I say. I can’t see that ugly bruise on her cheek no more, but I can still see it in my head. “Mr. Leigh, he do that to you on purpose?” I ask. She stops and looks scared for a minute. She clears her throat, but she don’t answer me. Maybe she don’t know the answer to that question.

“I got hit bad like that once too, by that O’Malley kid. He had big fists just like your Mr. too, and it really hurt. Jimmy beat him up for doing that. Broke his nose even. I sure was glad when the O’Malleys moved outta town ’cause Mr. O’Malley had to find work when times was hard. Mrs. Leigh, you want Jimmy to beat up Mr. Leigh for you? I think he’d do that.”

I don’t see Ma come in, but I hear her. “Earl!” she yells, and I start picking at my pants ’cause I know I’m in trouble now.

Eva Leigh steps out of the aisle where Ma can see her. “It’s all right, Mrs. Gunderman. He didn’t mean any harm.” Then she turns to me and says, “You’re a good boy, Earl.” I’m hoping Ma hears her, ’cause Ma ain’t thinking I’m such a good boy right now.

“Earl, go in the kitchen and keep an eye on those eggs boiling on the stove.”

I sit on a stool by the stove and watch them little bubbles that jiggle the eggs and rise up in little streams. I want to listen to the radio, but Ma says the radio is for after the day’s work is done, not before, even though she’s got a radio on in the store all the time, listening to them soap operas where all them ladies got troubles.

With nothing else to listen to, I listen to Ma and Eva Leigh. They is talking about that mean Luke again. Then I hear Betty Flannery come into the store and they hush up. Before you know it, Ma is showing off her hands, like she done at breakfast, saying that it
is
true. That that Lux dish soap does make a lady’s hands softer and prettier than the other leading brands in just twenty-eight days. Ma tells the ladies that she heard about the test on
Lux Radio Theater
and thought it was just an advertising gimmick, but oh, look and feel her hands. See how soft and white-looking they are. “Even Hank noticed the difference,” Ma says. Seems from what I can remember, Dad only grunted and didn’t even look up from his newspaper while Ma was showing off her new hands. All this ladies-talk makes me wish to hell I knowed how to fix broked cars.

I poke my head into the store to ask Ma how long I gotta watch the eggs boil. Betty is buying two boxes of Lux soap, ’cause Betty Flannery always likes looking pretty even if she’s old, but Eva Leigh ain’t buying nothing but that can of Copenhagen for Luke. I don’t suppose Luke cares a lick about if her hands are soft and pretty when they make his supper. Ma tells me to never mind, that she’ll be in in a minute.

When them eggs get done, Ma makes ’em into egg salad sandwiches. “Can I eat lunch with Dad and Jimmy today?” I ask, and she says I can, if I don’t dilly-dally there too long. She takes handfuls of oatmeal raisin cookies and drops ’em in the bag.

When I pedal my bike down to Dad’s Skelly, I’m not Earl Hedwig Gunderman riding a bike. I’m Charles A. Lindbergh in my flying machine. That cold air is blowing in my face and I’m flying so high that when I pass Sam outside the barber shop and he calls hello, I can’t even hear him, but I wave from the sky. Charles A. Lindbergh drove his plane, all by himself, all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. I shit you not. And he didn’t crash, not even once. I don’t wanna take over Gunderman’s Grocery when Ma gets old and dead. I want to fly airplanes across the Atlantic Ocean.

Jimmy’s outside when I pull into the parking lot, his yellow hair so lit up that I pretend it’s the sun I’m circling before I cut the engine and go down for a landing. “Nrrrrrrrrrrrr,” my voice goes lower ’til it stops. I prop my bike up against the brick building ’cause the kickstand is broke and it tips over if I don’t. Jimmy hears my plane engine kill and he grins. “Hey there, Lucky Lindy.” I look but don’t see Dad right off, which is a good thing, on account of Dad thinks Charles A. Lindbergh might be one of them Nazi bastards, after he saw a picture of him in the paper a couple years ago, getting some award from some Nazis in Germany. I take our lunch bag outta my basket. Jimmy holds out his hands and I toss it to him. “Hey, Jimmy,” I say, “how come folks call Charles A. Lindbergh ‘Lucky Lindy,’ anyway? What’s so goddamn lucky about your boy getting stealed and killed?”

Jimmy don’t answer, ’cause he’s digging in the lunch bag. He unwraps his sandwich and groans, “Ah, shit, don’t tell me this is egg salad.” So I don’t tell him.

Dad lets me and Jimmy have a Coca-Cola with our lunch, and that’s a real treat. We sell Coca-Cola at the grocery store too, but Ma hardly ever lets me have one. She says we ain’t the Rockerfellers, and that if she let me take whatever I wanted from the store, whenever I wanted it, we’d still be using the outhouse, and Ted the ice man would still be delivering blocks of ice for the store coolers. Ma is all proud when she says this, ’cause ain’t many in town with flushing toilets or electric coolers. If you ask me, though, I wouldn’t mind pissing in the old shithouse that’s still out back, long as what I’d be pissing would be Coca-Cola.

Me and Jimmy sit on the steps eating our sandwiches while Dad pumps gasoline into Delbert Larson’s Oldsmobile. I take a long swig of my pop and burp real loud and Jimmy laughs. “Don’t hurt yourself there, Earwig.”

“I’ll tell you one thing, Delbert,” Dad’s saying. “There’s no way this country’s gonna stay out of the war. I was listening to that new program on NBC’s Red Network. That one Kaltenborn is hosting—you catch that last night?”

Delbert shakes his head. “Nah, I took Ethel over to her sister’s.”

“Well, he was telling how Roosevelt just asked Congress for 2.5 billion dollars to pump into the military. For crissakes, Dieter was in here earlier, and I was telling him about it. When I finished, Dieter said he still thinks Roosevelt will keep us out of the war. That ignorant bastard can’t put two and two together for nothing.” Dad shakes his head, and so does Delbert. “Of course Roosevelt knows we’re headed to war. Why in the hell would he pump all that money into the military if he didn’t?”

“I know it, Hank. I know it,” Delbert says. “He’s not building up our forces for nothing. Goddamn shame it’s coming to this, though. Just when we’re getting back on our feet.”

Dad takes a hankie outta his pocket and wipes his forehead that always gets sweat-bubbled when he talks about the government. Dad glances up at the pump. When Delbert’s car is filled up, he takes out the nozzle and hangs it back up.

“What’re you gonna do, though, sit back while those Nazi bastards take over the whole goddamn world? I read a few years back that our country’s army is ranked seventeenth in the world. Seventeenth, for crissakes!”

“That right?” Delbert says.

“That’s what they said.” Dad shakes his head, which is big and turns red when he’s pissed off about something. “Right behind Romania. Behind Romania, for crisssakes!

“I’ll tell ya one thing, Delbert. Hitler ain’t gonna stop. Nazi bastard, attacking France like that. He’ll keep going until he’s got all of Europe, then he’ll be heading over here for us. I don’t care how much aid we give to the Brits, weapons and food aren’t gonna be enough. We’ll have troops over there. You wait and see.”