Norwood (15 page)

“Oh, it belongs to
these
people,” she said. “I wondered. I couldn't imagine.”

“That's pretty funny,” said Mr. Reese. “A chicken wearing a hat. I never heard of anything like that before. I guess there's a first time for everything though.”

Later Norwood and Rita Lee went around back to check on the subject of all this fun. There she was, squatting in the dust alone, shunned by the other chickens. Norwood held her beak down in a mossy skillet under a faucet. After a few dunkings she drank a little. He found some translucent worms on a chinaberry tree and held them in his hand and tried to get her to eat. She didn't want any. He talked to her and told her they were good and compared them to Safeway grapes. “All right, I'm on give 'em to Rita Lee then. She likes 'em.”

“Get away from me,” said Rita Lee.

He took the mortarboard off Joann's head but she still wouldn't eat.

Rita Lee said, “Have you ever hypnotized a chicken?”

“I never have.”

“You can do it.”

“How?”

“Let me see her.”

“Wait a minute.”

“It won't hurt her. They come right on out of it.”

She held Joann's chinless head down to the ground and slowly traced a line in the dust in front of her eyes. A few seconds of this and the chicken lay in position, transfixed.

Norwood said, “I'll be a son of a bitch.”

He tried it himself and soon they had all eleven of Mrs. Whichcoat's Rhode Island Reds lying about stupefied. He looked at them, then arranged four or five in a single rank and stood in front of them. “Congratulations, men,” he said. “Yall keep up the good work. The skipper just come through the squad bay and there was little piles of crap all over the deck.”

“You're silly, Norwood, you know that?”

“I think I'm on take her on with us.”

“You're going back on your word.”

“I know but she don't get along here with them red pullets.”

That night it rained. The wind came up and billowed the curtains and the birds stopped their noise and there was one lone rumble of thunder and then rain. Norwood heard people putting windows down. He waited. Water was dripping outside his window on a piece of tin. When things got quiet again he got up and put on his pants and his gaiters and took a penny box of matches from his shirt pocket and went out in the hall. Rita Lee's room was down at the end by the bathroom.

There were unaccountable cold spots in the hall, as in a spring-fed lake. He stood outside the door for a moment and started to knock, then decided no and quietly opened the door. There was a headboard bumping noise and a frantic scrambling movement on the bed table.

“Hey,” he said in a half whisper, “it's me.”

“Who is it?” said Edmund. “Who's there?”

Norwood struck a match. Edmund was crouched back against the headboard with his fountain pen at his side. He was wearing shorty pajamas of a golden hue.

“Oh. I was looking for Rita Lee.”

“Did you think she was in here?”

“Ain't this her room?”

“No, she's across the hall.”

“Oh.”

“You certainly gave me a fright.”

“I didn't mean to wake you up.”

“Well, no harm done.” He scratched his head vigorously, giving it a sixty-second workout. “I've still got soap in my hair. Their water is extremely hard.”

“I didn't notice that.”

“Yes, you can taste it. Very high mineral content.”

“Well, I'll let you get back to sleep.”

“Did you get your money?”

“Yeah, he paid me.”

“Well, look here, do you think you could lend me fifty dollars? I'll have it back to you in two weeks. That's a solemn promise, Norwood. You see, I'm going to be in rather a bind. I've been lying here figuring.”

“I'd have to have it back.”

“Yes, yes, of course. I feel like an absolute rat but I had no one else to turn to.”

“When could I get it back?”

“Two weeks, I swear it.”

“Okay. Two weeks.”

Norwood took five tens from his billfold and laid them on the foot of the bed. Edmund put on his glasses and got his memo book, chattering all the time, and made a to-do about entering the correct address in his memo book.

“No street, just Ralph?”

“Yeah, that's all. We get our mail at the post office.”

Edmund wrote down another address, one in Los Angeles, and tore that sheet from the memo book and crawled to the foot of the bed and handed it to Norwood. “You can always get in touch with me through this chap.” He picked up the money. “You're a jewel, Norwood. A veritable precious stone.”

Norwood looked at the little torn page. “What will I need to get in touch with you for?”

“Well, you won't, of course. But if you do, there it is.”

“Just so I get it back.”

“You can count on it. Please trust me on this.”

Norwood left and closed the door, the crawling golden vision still in his brain. He crossed the hall and entered Rita Lee's room. “Hey, it's me,” he said. She turned on the bed light and turned it off again. He caught only the briefest glimpse of legs and red slip and arms. He struck a match. Now she was under the sheet and had it pulled up under her chin.

“I thought I'd look in on you.”

“What for?”

“Well, it was raining. I thought you might be scared.”

“I'm not scared of rain. Nobody is.”

“There was some lightning too. In here by yourself and everything. I didn't know.”

“All I know is I'm about to burn up in this feather bed. You sink right down in it.”

“How's your bed?”

“I just got through saying. It's hot.”

He struck another match. Outside some night birds had started up again:
ChipOutOf TheWhiteOak . . . Ted-FioRito. . . .
Whippoorwills. How did two certain birds get together? And then what?

“Norwood, listen hon, somebody is liable to come along.”

“Okay.”

“Hear? You go on back now.”

“I will in a minute.”

“No, right now.”

“Okay.”

“I haven't even got my ring yet.”

“Okay.”

“Hear?”

“I was laying there in bed thinking about something, Rita Lee.”

“What was it?”

“Well, when we get home and get squared away I'm on take you out to dinner. I'm twenty-three years old and I never taken a girl out to dinner in my life except drive-ins. What I mean is supper but they always call it dinner.”

“That'll sure be nice. Do you like Mexican food with a lot of hot stuff on it?”

“Yeah.”

“I do too. Listen, here's what I'd like to do: I'd like to live in a trailer and play records all night. See, we'd be in there together with our little kitchen and everything. You can fix those things up pretty nice inside.”

“I don't know about a trailer.”

“I don't think they cost a whole lot. We could get a used one.”

“We'll see about it.”

Mrs. Reese gave Rita Lee some sheets and towels and other odds and ends and a jumbo black suitcase with straps on the outside, not a new one but serviceable enough. She also gave her a little talk. Joe William got up late and came in the kitchen and Norwood was sitting there at the table by himself drinking coffee with his hat on and whistling “My Filipino Baby.”

“Good morning.”

“I figured you'd be out checking cotton today.”

“No, not on Saturdays. Sometimes half a day. I've got to do a quick recheck on a colored guy this afternoon but it won't take long. Where's the incredible shrinking man?”

“He's gone. He got up real early and your daddy took him to catch the bus.”

“Flew the coop, huh? Well, he was a nice little guy.”

“Yeah.”

“You want some toast?”

“I already ate.”

Mrs. Whichcoat came in the back door with an empty wire basket. She hung it up in the pantry and took off her brown garden gloves. “All the hens have stopped laying,” she said. “I didn't get one egg.” There was a note of despair in her voice but no surprise. It was as though she had warned all along that there would be treachery one day in the hen house. She went in the living room and turned on the television set.

Norwood said, “We got to get on down the road our own selves.”

“You're not leaving today?”

“Yeah, we got to get on.”

“You might as well stay the weekend now. I thought we'd go over to Memphis tonight.”

“I been on the road too long as it is.”

“You want some more coffee?”

“Yeah. Have you got a box or something around here I can carry that chicken in?”

“I expect we can find something.”

“How much longer does your job last?”

“Another couple of weeks. Maybe three.”

“Is it very hard?”

“No, not usually. We're checking plow-ups now. We go out and make sure they've destroyed what they overplanted. They all overplant. I've got a headache with this one colored guy. You can't tell what he's plowed up. He doesn't have it planted in rectangular fields like everyone else, he's got it in trapezoids and ovals with tomatoes and pole beans running all through it so there's no way you can measure it unless you're Dr. Vannevar Bush. He knows I'll get tired pretty soon and say, Yeah it's okay. Well, they screw him on the allotment anyway. I don't blame him.”

“That sounds too hard.”

“It's not really.”

“I wisht I was home right now.”

“Are you going direct to Shreveport?”

“Naw, Ralph first. I'll have to leave Rita Lee there at home for a while and go scout it out.”

They drove out to a slough and shot at snakes and cypress knees for an hour or so. After lunch they looked through some stuff in the garage and found a long narrow cage suitable for Joann to travel in. It had once served as a humane catch-'em-alive mink trap, and in fact no mink had ever entered it, such was its humanity. Kay came by in her powerful Thunderbird which nobody in town really wanted to insure and they loaded up and drove downtown and parked under the bus stop sign in front of Junior's EAT Café. Kay gave Rita Lee a little gift-wrapped box with a ribbon on it.

She opened it. “Hey, a cigarette lighter. This is really nice. Thanks.”

“That's just what they needed, Kay, an onyx table lighter.”

“How do you know what they need? Besides, it's a good one. It's butane.”

They sat in the car with the doors open and ate ice cream sandwiches. A young carpenter in striped overalls and with nails in his mouth was fixing Junior's sagging front porch with some new yellow two-by-fours. He had brought his kids to work with him and they were in the cab of a pickup. A little girl with sandy hair was hanging out the window backward and shaking her head from side to side. “Boy, it looks like the world is blowing up,” she said. Kay said, “Don't do that, sugar, it'll make you sick.” Two stores down, at Kroger's, a teenage meat cutter came outside and looked around and then rolled his apron up and leaned back against the building with one foot up and smoked a cigarette.

The little sandy-haired girl said, “Hey Daddy, come here.”

“I'll be there in a minute.”

“Come here now.”

“What is it?”

“Randolph wants to peepee.”

“Well, you can help him.”

“Yeah, but I don't want to, Daddy.”

The bus came and Norwood and Rita Lee got on with their plunder and Norwood came back up front and stood on the step. Joe William said, “Let me know how you make out down there with Roy Acuff and Hank Williams and all those guys.”

“Roy Acuff is in Nashville, Tennessee, and Hank Williams is dead. He's been dead.”

“Well, whoever it is. Look, champ, I'm sorry I took so long on the dough.”

“That's all right. Yall will have to come see us when we get us a place.”

“Yeah, I'd like to. We'll see what happens. I don't know. You can see how it is here, touch and go. Come back when you can stay longer.”

“I'll see you sometime, tush hog. You take it easy.”

“Okay.”

THE AIR CONDITIONING felt good. Rita Lee got the window seat. She read stories in her love magazines about a lot of whiny girls who couldn't tell the difference between novelties salesmen and Norwoods.
What dopes!
They could expect no more sympathy from Rita Lee, she who had wept bitter tears with them. Along in the back pages of one magazine she ran across an interesting ad. It offered, by mail and on easy terms, a $79.95 wedding set, complete with solitaire diamond engagement ring of unspecified caratage, and two gold bands.
Rush me free booklet of bargains,
said the coupon,
and tell me how high volume sales can mean BIG SAVINGS for meinstead of BIG PROFITS for the jeweler!
The ad showed a man in a Stetson with a jeweler's glass in his eye. He was holding two six-guns and blasting away over his head at some exploding balloons labeled
High Diamond Prices.
Under the man were the words
Yes
,
Grady Fring is bringing them DOWN!
Rita Lee tore the ad out and put it away. She would discuss it with Norwood later, at a good time. It was not the kind of thing to interrupt him with.

She also saw an interesting sight. On a curve not far from Little Rock a busload of Elks had turned over. The bus was on its right side in the ditch, the front wheels still slowly turning, and the Elks were surfacing one at a time through the escape hatch on the left side, now topside. One Elk was lying on the grass, maybe dead, no ball game for him, and others were limping and hopping about and holding their heads. Another one, in torn shirt-sleeves, was sitting on a suitcase on top of the bus. He was not lifting a finger to help but as each surviving brother Elk stuck his head up through the hatchway, he gave a long salute from his compressed-air horn. The big Trailways cruiser began to slow down. When the man saw this he turned with his noise device and hooted it—there could be no mistake—at the driver. Norwood was talking to a man with bulging eyes across the aisle who had gone broke in Mississippi selling premium beer for $3.95 a case on credit, and they both missed it, that hooting part. They did help load the injured into ambulances. The former tavern keeper found a silver dollar in the grass and kept it.