Nathan Coulter (16 page)

Uncle Burley straightened up and watched them for a minute, wiping his face with his sleeve. “They're getting serious about it, ain't they? I've seen friendlier dogfights.”

“I wish they'd quit,” I said.

He laughed. “The last one to drop dead is the winner.”

It was getting on toward sundown, and turning cooler. The sun slanted red across the green and gold of the tobacco, filling the spaces between rows with shadows.

Then I heard Brother cursing. He'd made a mislick and it took him three tries to fix it.

“That looks like the end of it,” Uncle Burley said. “He's let himself get flustered.”

Daddy took up his song again. “Some people just can't work without floundering and falling around at it. But there's always one who can do it all day long and never miss a lick.” He kept talking and kept working, and we could see that he was beginning to move away from Brother.

And before long Brother made another mistake.

“Yes sir,” Daddy said, “these little boys just barely weaned come out and try the old man. And they want to put it on him so bad, and they work at it so hard. But they just can't quite make it.”

Brother threw down his tools and went for Daddy. Daddy turned and met him. We heard them come together, the thump of bone and muscle that sounded as if they'd already half killed each other; and then they went down, gripped together and rolling in the dirt. We could hear Brother cursing, nearly crying, he was so mad and hurt over losing. And Daddy was laughing; from the sound of it I knew that he was in a mood to fight everybody in the world one at a time and would enjoy doing it.

We laid our tools down and started to them. But Grandpa was nearer them than we were. He was in the middle of the patch, counting the rows we'd cut. And he got there first. He waded into the dust they were raising and tried to prod them apart with his cane, but they rolled under him and knocked him down. He sat there with his hat twisted around on the side of his head, cursing and flailing at them with the cane.

We hurried to him and picked him up. Gander brushed some of the dirt off his clothes and led him down the ridge toward the house. By that time Daddy had Brother down on his back and was straddling him, slapping him in the face. He was laughing, his teeth gritted and his face caked with sweat and dust, breathing hard.

Uncle Burley locked his arms around Daddy's shoulders and dragged him away, and I helped Brother up. Daddy stood there with Uncle Burley still holding him, laughing in Brother's face.

“You God-damned baby,” he said.

“Go to hell,” Brother said. And he turned around and followed Grandpa and Gander down the ridge.

Uncle Burley let go his hold on Daddy, and the three of us walked back across the patch to where we'd left the team and wagon. We didn't say anything. We tried to act as if we'd just quit work and were going home.

When we got to the other side, Uncle Burley picked up the water jug and he and I climbed on the wagon. Daddy started across the hollow to his house.

“Good night,” he said.

We said we'd see him in the morning.

Uncle Burley and I didn't talk after that either. It had got quiet all of a sudden, and there was only the jolt and rattle of the wagon and the knowledge of what had happened. Daddy and Brother had fought. It had happened, and it was over. We couldn't think of anything to say.

I felt sorry for both of them. Brother had been beaten and insulted until it would be a long time before he'd know what to think of himself. And I knew that in the night, when he was by himself in his house, Daddy would lie awake thinking about it, and be sorry.

While we drove home the sun went down.

Uncle Burley and I unharnessed the mules and put them in their stalls
and did the feeding and milking. It took us until nearly dark. When we finished the work and started to the house, Brother was coming out the yard gate. His face was cut up a little and his lower lip was swollen. He had a bundle of clothes under his arm.

“Boy, are you going?” Uncle Burley asked him.

“I guess I am.”

“You're going to let us know about you?”

“I will.”

Uncle Burley took some money out of his pocket and put it in Brother's hand. And then we told him good-bye.

A few stars were out. We stood in the gate a long time after Brother was out of sight, dreading to believe that he was gone.

We worked on through the tobacco cutting. Daddy was easier to get along with after Brother left. He joked with us more, trying to make himself pleasant; and even though we were shorthanded he started giving us time to rest before we went back to work in the afternoons. Nobody talked about Brother's leaving when Daddy was around, but we could tell that it was on his mind and that he hated what he'd done. He didn't push us so hard anymore, but he drove himself harder than ever. There were a good many days when he worked in the field by himself until it was too dark to see, after the rest of us had quit and gone home.

Brother's leaving was harder on Grandma and Grandpa than it was on any of the rest of us. They grieved over him most of the time, and it made them seem older. We hadn't heard from him; and every morning Grandma talked about how she expected to get a letter from him that day, and at night when no letter had come she wondered where he was and if he was well and why he hadn't written to us. Sometimes at the supper table she'd remember things he said and did when he was little, and then she'd cry and have to get up and leave.

Grandpa never talked about it when she did. Her grief made him ashamed of his own. And he never mentioned the fight in the tobacco patch, because he was ashamed of that too, and embarrassed that he hadn't been able to stop it. But Brother had been a satisfaction to him, and now and then he'd mention to Uncle Burley or me that Brother promised
to have a better head on him than anybody in the family, saying it as if Brother was dead.

After we finished the tobacco harvest we harrowed the ground and sowed it in grain. Then we cut the fall hay crop and put it in the barn. In a day or two after that the first hard frost came. The good brittle days began. The trees turned brown and red and yellow and dropped their leaves, and wild geese flew over the house at night. Uncle Burley and I went out in the early mornings to hunt squirrels in the woods. If Brother had been there it would have been perfect. Uncle Burley and I talked about him a lot, remembering the other years when we'd hunted together.

We spent two weeks mending fences and doing other work that had to be done before the weather got cold. And after that we began the corn harvest. There was no letup in the work, and I was glad of it for Daddy's sake. It kept him from worrying too much about Brother, and as long as he was busy he could take some pleasure in himself. He and Uncle Burley and I worked together, or swapped work with Gander or Big Ellis, watching the season change and planning the winter's work. The cool weather made us feel good, and it was a pleasant time.

Winter set in. The first snow fell and melted, then it turned cold again and the ground froze hard and stayed frozen. We scooped the last of the corn into the crib on a Wednesday, and then slacked off work to rest before we started stripping the tobacco and getting it ready for market. And that Saturday, for the first time in a couple of months, Uncle Burley and I cleaned up after dinner and walked into town. It was clear and bright and beginning to thaw a little. We cut across the fields to the road, taking our time and looking at things. It hadn't been winter long enough for us to be tired of it, and it felt good to be outside with the whole afternoon ahead of us. On the tops of the ridges the wind stung our faces and hummed in our ears, and when we went down into the hollows we could feel the warmth of the sun and it was quiet.

The grass on the hillside was brown, and the trees in the hollows were bare and black except for a few green patches of cedars. Now and then a rabbit jumped up ahead of us, and we'd find his snug nesting place in a clump of grass.

“It'll be Christmas before we know it,” Uncle Burley said.

All at once I had the feeling I used to have when I was little, enjoying
the newness of the winter and waiting for Christmas. Then I thought about Mother being dead and Brother gone away, and I lost the feeling.

“We'll have to go coon hunting before long,” Uncle Burley said. “It's getting about that time.”

I knew by the way he said it that the notion excited him. He always started hunting at about that time of year, and hunted almost every favorable night from then until the end of the winter. In the mornings when we went to work he'd talk about what a fool a man was to hunt half the night when he had to work the next day, and he'd swear he'd never go on a weeknight again. But by four o'clock in the afternoon he'd have the fever to hunt; and he'd usually go, by himself if the rest of us were too tired to go with him.

“If this thaw keeps up we'll have good tracking for the dogs,” he said.

We walked the rest of the way to the road, planning what night we'd hunt. When we got to the road we saw Jig Pendleton coming up the hill toward us, and we stopped to wait for him.

Uncle Burley called, “Come on, Jig. We'll walk in with you.”

Jig came up and said hello to us, and we went on toward town.

“You see that hand, Burley?” Jig said. He held his hand out for Uncle Burley to see.

“I see it, Jig.”

“It's putrefied,” Jig said. He flapped along with his head tilted up sideways, as sober and dead serious as an undertaker.

“Well, it might be, Jig.”

Jig held out his other hand. “There now, Burley, can't you tell the difference? That one ain't. One of them's good and the other one's evil. One of them's blessed and the other one's damned.”

“You're in a fix,” Uncle Burley said. “You tried a poultice on that bad one?”

“Now Burley, there ain't but one poultice that'll heal her. There ain't but one poultice that'll draw the corruption out of that hand. And that's the poultice of the Holy Spirit.”

He'd stopped in the middle of the road and was beating the palm of the putrefied hand with the fist of the sound one. We saw that he was about to start into a sermon, so Uncle Burley said, “Got any nets in the river, Jig?”

Jig hushed and caught up with us. “Aw now, Burley, the water ain't right. The water's got to be right first.”

We kept him on fishing for a while, then he asked Uncle Burley how everybody was getting along at our house.

“All fine. We're getting ready to start stripping tobacco the first of the week.”

“Tobacco,” Jig said. “I used to raise tobacco once. But I quit. I was plowing one morning, and the Lord said, ‘Jig, how'd you like for your daughter to smoke?' And I said, ‘I wouldn't like it, Lord. It's a sin for a woman to smoke.' And I unhitched the mule right there in the middle of the row, and I left.”

“You say you left?”

“Left,” Jig said. “I went to fishing then. You know that's where He called them from. From fishing. One of these mornings He'll come and stand on the riverbank and He'll say, ‘Jig.' And I'll say, ‘Yes, Lord?' And He'll say, ‘Follow me, Jig.' And I will arise and follow Him. Aw, He ain't come yet. But He's coming. He's got to get my mansion ready first, but He'll be here.”

Then Jig told us about Heaven. He said it was a million miles square and a million miles high, and every street was gold and every house was a mansion. And at night every star was brighter than the sun.

“Do you know why He made the stars?”

Uncle Burley said he didn't know.

“He liked to hear them sing,” Jig said.

When we got to town Uncle Burley and I went into the poolroom, and Jig went on up the street to the grocery store. Inside the poolroom it was dark, except for the three green tables in a row down the middle of the floor with lights shining on them. We went past the counter and on to the center of the room, where half a dozen men were standing in a circle around the stove. Big Ellis and Gander Loyd were there, and they made room for us between them.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” Uncle Burley said. He held his hands over the top of the stove and rubbed them together. “That wind's kind of brittle around the edges, ain't she?”

“We haven't seen you for a while, Burley,” Gander said. “Where you been keeping yourself?”

Big Ellis giggled. “We heard you were dead, Burley.”

“So did I,” Uncle Burley said. “But I knew it was a lie as soon as I heard it.”

They laughed, and then drifted into a conversation about who had started stripping tobacco and who hadn't. They talked about what kind of season it promised to be for that work; and from there they went into an argument about the prospects for a good market that year.