When I Crossed No-Bob (8 page)

For a roof the men put on the bark slabs, laid like shingles and held in place by a log for weight. I can see they build the roof good, pulling a crosscut saw and toting the slab boards up on a ladder.

The town cannot afford glass windowpanes, so Mrs. Davenport paints some paper with hogs' lard to let in the light. In the summer, they can always knock out the clay between the logs for ventilation and light, then fill it in again in winter to keep out the cold.

At one side of each window is a kind of ornament resembling a doorknob for the purpose of holding curtains in place. Mrs. Davenport says that's the way they have it in her house, and she thinks children should feel special when they come to school.

At the end of the week, when everything is up and ready, Mr. Frank, he thinks to paint one wall in the room black so students can write on it with chalk and use pieces of cotton as erasers.

Then finally, Mr. Frank, he paints the ceiling a beautiful white.

"That's the prettiest thing I ever saw," I say, looking at the ceiling.

"We knew exactly what we wanted this time," Mr. Frank says. "That's one thing to be said for reconstructing."

When we are all through we stand back to admire our work.

"Is it OK to take pride in such a thing?" I ask.

Mr. Frank smiles. "In the Bible it says that in the beginning, each time God made something new, he stood back and said, 'It is good.' Now,
there
was a man proud of his work."

"'Cept he wasn't a man."

"Sometimes it helps to think of him as a man. To think of him as the grandpappy of us all."

I think on this some. I think until my brain starts itching again. What I don't understand is, where was the Lord Grandpappy that night the schoolhouse burned? What was he doing?

When we all finally do go back to school, Mrs. Davenport, she volunteers to teach us for the time when Mr. Frank goes away to New Orleans for supplies. When me and Miss Irene wave goodbye to Mr. Frank, I get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Pappy left and so did Momma. What makes me think Mr. Frank will come back?

A few mornings later, I go to the hen house like I always do, except this time I get this feeling something or someone is watching me. I hear a rustle, something slipping away. Is it a weasel? A possum? I hope not a fox.

In the coming light of the sun, I see a hand around a chicken's neck. I catch my breath and my eyes follow that hand up to an arm, and up further to the face of my pappy.

"Pappy?"

"Shhhh,"he says.

It is Pappy, who didn't go to Texas after all, or is he back?

I walk over to him, not sure what I can or can't do. I put my hands on his arms, like the beginning of a hug he won't let me finish.

"Heh," he says, smiling. "That Frank Russell. He's gone, idn't he." Pappy lets go of the chicken's neck and I let go of him, glad to see the chicken clucking away again, going back to pecking around the hay for insects or corn.

"Pappy? You the one been stealin' them eggs and the chicken too?"

"I'm no chicken thief," he says, smiling, like he thinks it's funny. I cannot tell if he's joking. Is this another one of Pappy's pranks? "And I know you will not tell on me being here, because I am your pappy."

And he leaves. He just up and leaves, just like that, and I can't help but think and wonder,
Did this happen or was I dreaming?

At noon I see Pappy coming down the road, heading straight our way. All these years of not seeing him. All the years I thought I forgot his face, and now he is becoming an everyday sight for me.

He tips his hat to Miss Irene. He looks to have cleaned himself up since this morning.

Miss Irene, she goes back into the house and I wonder what all she's doing. Getting a gun? I hear the china shake in the china cabinet as she hurries across the floor.

She comes out with some bills, goes to the edge of the porch, and bends down to hand them to Pappy, like she's petting a dog. Pappy looks at the bills and laughs until he coughs a bad-sounding cough.

"I don't want money, ma'am. I'm no beggar man. I come for my girl. You can't buy a person. Not nowadays, anyhow. Besides, this here is no legal tender. This here is Confederate monies." But he pockets it just the same because he and I both know you can get maybe ten cents for a ten-dollar Confederate bill.

I am sorry for Miss Irene then. She knows no better. She is alone, without her husband, and here in front of her is my mischievous pappy, a man people say has killed. She is thinking he is here because he wants money or food, here because he wants something from her. But I know he is here because of me. I have brought danger to poor Miss Irene's doorstep.

"Word is you and your husband plan on startin' a general store. With such dreadful men around, it behooves me to tell your husband to protect himself when he's going after supplies. And you being all alone here. You need to protect yourself too."

"Is that a threat, Mr. O'Donnell?"

"No threat at all. Just a fact. Dangerous times we live in." He spits tobacco juice off to the side, takes his hat off, and looks around some. "I come for Addy, Miss Russell. I'll finish the raising now, if you please."

Even from where I stand, I catch an oily smell on account of the grease he put in his hair to keep it back. He stands in the yard I swept clean and smooth, and he talks and holds his hat over the center of his chest. Miss Irene listens. Her eyes study him long and hard. I know she is taking in every last detail of what I see. Here stands a man come to reclaim his property.

He taught me how to catch lizards, kill ducks, feather chickens, skin rabbits. He taught me how to hold a gun and a knife. He taught me how to tree a possum, then how to shake him down. He taught me how to be a boy even though I was a girl. He taught me what Momma wouldn't, and how could I not feel a need to pay him back? When he looks me in the eye, I read what that look means to say. I seen that look before when he went calling on folks, getting them to pay up on bets he liked to make. His eyes are saying,
I come to collect.

I can see that Miss Irene don't know what to do. This here's my pappy and he has a right to take me. And I bet she's wishing he'd just go on and do just that. Since I've been here, seems like nothing but trouble has come their way, just the way Mr. Frank thought it would be. Their eggs and chickens get stolen, a schoolhouse burned down and a little boy killed, and me, another mouth to feed. I take matters in my own two hands then and step down off the Russell porch.

Pappy, he hugs me, and when his beard scratches my face, I think of how Momma would have his hide on account of his scratchiness and ill-kept ways. He smells as though he has just been in the river where he bathes and I think that was for me. He cleaned up for me and I'm not used to this sorrowful feeling I have for Pappy, and I know right away that he wouldn't like it one bit—his twelve-year-old girl feeling sorry for him. No, he wouldn't like it one bit, and he'd surely whip me for that.

Pappy. He is bad and mean and dangerous, but he is still my pappy.

I think maybe it will be a fine thing to go back home, whatever is left of it, and sit in a familiar room among familiar things. "Yer shoes is too big," he says, looking down at my feet. "I
can fix those." I don't tell him Mr. Frank made me these shoes. I know he knows. Pappy, he knows everything.

I say my thank-yous and farewells to Miss Irene. Pappy won't let me take anything she wants to give. No blankets or biscuits or peaches. Nothing. We set to walking.

I look at the back of Pappy's slicked-back hair as he walks ahead of me to cross back into No-Bob. We don't say much because Pappy never did, not with me, anyway. But I can't help but wonder,
Did he go to Texas or was he here all along?

He says, well, sure, he went off to Texas and to other places too.

"What were you gone so long for?"

He doesn't answer me. He tells me stories of his travels instead. He says he saw a woman with no legs or hands who cut out paper silhouettes by holding a common pair of scissors in her mouth. He says he met a man who sold skunk oil to people with rheumatism and another who could tell you your future by feeling the bumps on your head.

"Yeah?" I say. "What'd he say about you?"

He stops walking, turns around, and lays my hands on the top of his greasy head. I feel a few bumps and even a
bald spot. I have my hands in Pappy's hair and I have to laugh and joke. "Which bump is it that makes a fellow a chicken thief?"

He sniffs through his nose. That's the way Pappy laughs. "I was meant to be a statesman," he says serious and proud, acting like a statesman, whatever that is. "I have natural ability."

I can't help but smile, and we walk on. Pines grow closer together out here at the edge of No-Bob where the road gets narrow and buggies can't pass easily. Breathing in the smell of the pine trees, poplars, and cypresses, taking in such beauty, you feel goodness. You don't want to be mean.

"Sure is pretty," I say, looking around, changing our line of talk.

I want to think that Pappy could love or at least that he could learn how to love. Maybe Mr. Frank or Miss Irene could teach him or maybe I could. But some folks don't have the learning in them. Some folks won't let their hearts open up for learning. That's what I've learned. I've learned that some people can learn and love both, and some people can't, and Pappy might very well be one of the can'ts.

Still, I feel hope for him.

We pass three goats. Pappy takes one of them and rubs snuff in its snout, then calls out to the farmer in the field and
says, "Looka here." The farmer sees his goat snuffing and snorting and pawing at the ground.

"What's wrong with him?" the farmer asks.

"He's got a bad case of black snout," Pappy says.

"What's that?" the farmer asks.

"It's a catching sickness, and if you don't get rid of this one, the other two will get it for sure."

Pappy offers his services, saying for a peck of fruit wine or brandy he'll slaughter the goat himself, even dispose of him for the farmer. The farmer runs home and comes back with a peck of peach brandy, and Pappy leads the snuffing, snorting goat away.

"Come on, Addy Cakes," he says, chuckling to himself. "Better times coming."

Pappy used to call me Addy Cakes.
Addy Cake, Addy Cake, baker man,
he'd sing.
Bake me a cake as fast as you can. Pat it and prick it and mark it with an
A.
Put it in the oven for Addy and me!

What else can I do but follow Pappy and the goat? This is not stealing because the farmer agreed. Tricking him is not the same as stealing. I say this to myself over and over, as though I am trying to talk myself into something.

When we get back home with the goat, there is no Momma
to hail us at the gate. From where I stand now, I see my house for what it is—a one-room frame hut leaning in a field of red clay.

"Where's Momma?"

"I was fixin' to ask you the same," Pappy says.

"She went to Texas to look for you."

He looks at me in a queer way as he thinks on this, then he laughs and laughs, though I don't know why.

"Did you go to Texas?" I ask.

"Sure I did," he says, not looking me in the eye.

Inside, the place does not look the same. We never did have much, no iron pot or fancy kitchen fireplace. No, here we cooked in a wash pot out in the yard over a fire with stakes on each side, with an iron bar across them to hang pots on. But Momma and I kept it clean and tidy when we lived here together.

Now it is a stale, sodden place, reeking of mud and garbage. The air is heavy with the smell of man sweat, whiskey, wet leather, and animal manure—cow and chicken both.

It's Pappy's place now. Pappy's old shirts, worn boots, empty bottles, and ripped breeches are on the floor, shoved aside in the corners. Rusted knives, bits of broken dishes, and chicken bones stick to the dirt floor.

It's winter now and he keeps the windows covered with wooden shutters. The flour sacks Momma put up for curtains are all tattered and half down. There are still two beds, but I don't know what happened to the table and chairs, and I know enough not to ask. The wind blows through the unfinished chinks in the sides of the house.

A barrel marked u.s. sits in one of the corners of the room. I break into it and see that it is filled with cornmeal. I set out to make cornbread. Pappy sees what I've done.

"How could you do such a thing?" he says. "That barrel of food wasn't meant for No-Bob, but for all of Smith County."

I look at him. He has half a grin starting to run across his mouth.

"That barrel was marked," I say. "It said 'U.S.,' so
us
commenced to eat from it."

Oh but Pappy sure likes this one. He repeats what I said himself. He slaps his leg. He says it over and over and he laughs and laughs as he slits the goat's neck.

That night, we feed all the O'Donnells who come by. Pappy says we are feasting to celebrate my homecoming. He tells everybody he sees about the cornmeal in the barrel marked u.s. He says, "See? What'd I tell you? She's one of our own."

I am proud that my pappy is so proud. We sit on the dirt floor eating goat meat, all around the open-pit fire inside a circle of stones.

Pappy brings out his fiddle and one of my uncles brings out his washboard and they play and we get up and dance the heel-and-toe and the forward-and-back, whirling and stomping across our bare earth floor.

There are plenty of greasy, smutty-faced O'Donnell children, some older, some younger than me, all of them—boys and girls—cussing like bad men. They smell like wet dogs and the dogs smell like them and the children don't care any more than the dogs do. Have O'Donnell children always been this dirty or am I just now seeing it? Was I like that? Am I going back to being like that, slipping back into old ways?

But it is good to see all of us O'Donnells whooping it up the way we can do, the way we used to do. These are my people. This is my family, my kin. Pappy calls us a clan. He says you can never run away from your people.

In the thick of the fun, Pappy introduces me to an O'Donnell who I know killed a man over a ten-cent bet in a game of cards. He goes by the name of Smasher. I don't know his real name.