When I Crossed No-Bob (9 page)

Me and Smasher, we dance the two-step.

The tale of how Pappy got the goat is told again and again, all night long, with shouts of laughter and applause and "Black snout?" and "Tell it again, tell it again." All the while I'm thinking,
What of the farmer? What of the farmer's wife and children? What of the goat? When is a good story not nice? When does funny turn into just plain mean?

I do feel sorrowful bad for that farmer, as dumb as he was. But I am powerful hungry and I can't think but to eat.

Pappy, he drinks a might too much moonshine. He lies across a bed, turns weepy, and says he doesn't have but five cents to his name, and he runs his hand in his pocket and pulls out a silver dollar and says, "Where did I get that?"

I tap him on the shoulder and say, "You got it out of your pocket, Pappy." I think everyone is happy. I tell him to put it back in his pocket and he puts it back in his pocket.

"You don't want to be here," he says to me, his voice going hard and angry all at once.

"You're wrong, Pappy."

He turns to Smasher and says, "I won't let my girl go in any house in this county but yours."

"You need to eat some, Pappy."

"You," Pappy says, turning to me. I look at his face and I back away quick. "You don't tell me what to do. You will do as
you are told. I am your pappy, all right." He gets up as if to leave but recalls it is his house. He pulls out his knife and looks at me. Everybody goes quiet.

This is what always happens—every Saturday the men meet up, stand around, drink, spit, and insult one another until the fighting starts.

I give Pappy his fiddle. He looks at his knife in one hand and the fiddle in his other.

"Go on and play something, Pappy," I say.

Pappy starts to play.

Late that night I am half-asleep, listening to the slow, low talk of Smasher and the other O'Donnell men around the burning and crackling fire, Pappy sharpening his knife with a rock he always carries in his pocket.

I listen to them recounting Pappy's exploits, how he used to fight so long and so hard that the fighters had to stop and use a pocketknife to pick the knuckle skin from between their teeth, how Pappy tied up that man to a plow as though he were a mule and made him plow a field.

"Wadn't that man your brother Garner?"

And they all laugh even harder.

Somebody says something that sounds like
Addy knows too much.
Then I hear Pappy say, "Addy?"—not
to
me but
about
me.

"Yer wrong," he says. "Even if she knew, Addy would never betray her pappy. 'Member—she's an O'Donnell first and foremost. She's loyal."

I fall asleep thinking how I
am
loyal and how now, out of the blue, I want to prove that to Pappy.

That night I dream that all the women in No-Bob have bird beaks for noses and walk around with their beaks in the air, squatting every now and then to peck at their children. The men all have monkey faces that they try to pull off but can't.

I wake up in a sweat, and when I get up to splash my face, the water in the washing pot inside has frozen and I almost break my knuckles breaking the ice to get to the water.

At dawn I do what I did for Mr. Frank and Miss Irene. I draw water from the well, kindle the fire, cook up some cornbread. I set to sweeping the dirt floor, thinking now that I know what a real house looks like, I can fix this broken-up one. Now that I have helped build a school, I can rebuild this here house.

Pappy sleeps all morning and arises to dress at noon, tucking his knife and pistol into his pants. It's like he's not dressed without his knife and pistol.

"Come on," he says. "You, me, we got a meeting with Smasher."

I am to marry Smasher.

Pappy tells me this on the way to Smasher's house while he teaches me some about the stars and such, even though it is still day. He tells me about the night the stars fell. He says he doesn't know where the stars go when they fall from the sky. They just fall and go out, not hurting nobody.

Then he complains about the quiet all around us. He says he thinks better with a lot of noise, noise like screaming and yelling, gunfire and shouting. The silence irks him, but the quiet is what I like.

"I don't want to marry Smasher," I whisper.

He stops and looks at me square on. "You
will
marry Smasher. And if you don't, I'll throw yer hide to the snakes in the swamp."

Pappy says the Bible says to "multiply and replenish the earth" and his pappy took that part of the Bible real serious because he set out to do just that and had twenty-two children with two different wives. Pappy doesn't say "at the same time," but I know that to be true too.

"I don't want to marry nobody, Pappy. I'm not but twelve years old. I can live with you, cook and clean for you. I want to be with you and go back to the schoolhouse and learn some more." I wished I brought my blue-back speller with me. I'd only got as far as
baker
in it.

"Mr. Frank says—"

Pappy swings around and puts his hand over my mouth so that I cannot speak. His hand smells of tobacco.

"I never ever want to hear you say that name again, you hear?" He takes his hand away from my mouth. "Everything that Frank and Irene said to you? Forget. Forget it all."

I stare down at my shoes. "Yes, sir."

He palms the asafetida bag I wear around my neck. Then he yanks it off and throws it to the ground.

"Us O'Donnells, we don't wear these either," he says, turning to walk on.

Without him seeing, I pick the bag from the dirt and stuff it in my pocket.

"You think you so smart now you read and write. Well. Guess what, you're thirteen. You missed a birthday. And besides, you've had enough schooling. I'll school you from here on out. Schoolhouse or no schoolhouse, you'll never be as smart as your pappy. Never."

What would Momma tell me? What would she have me do? Would she want me marrying Smasher? All that time, living with Momma, I missed Pappy. All that time. Now here I am living with Pappy and I'm missing missing missing my momma.

We walk a ways up the trail. A peddler stops to ask me to fasten the trace that has come loose on his wagon. I fasten the trace, but Pappy pulls the peddler out of his wagon.

"She don't do what
anybody
tells her," Pappy says to the man, putting his face in his face. "She does what
I
tell her." Pappy slaps the man, cuts his shirttails off, and tells him to drive on before he cuts him good.

We watch the peddler drive off, fast. I know I should feel bad for that peddler, but I am proud and confused that Pappy
took up for me. I don't do what
anybody
tells me. I do what Pappy tells me.

It is Saturday and Smasher hails us at the gate and invites us in. The pine groves grow almost to his door. He lives in a one-room place just like ours with his twin brother, Eustace.

Straight away we sit down to eat. On their round kitchen table is a contraption, a wheel that you put the food on and it goes around and around so others can get at the food and nobody has to serve you. Smasher calls the wheel his "lazy wife."

Pappy sits me next to Smasher. Smasher, he still has both his ears but he has a rising smell. He has slicked back his hair and waxed his mustache, but he needs to bathe.

I think about how Miss Irene might suggest Smasher have a bath by fetching him some soap and water, and just thinking of her again makes me smile. My smiling makes Smasher smile and gets him started talking about how so many people died in the war. He talks about the difference between dying and getting killed. How getting killed was better than just dying. He thinks he's being entertaining.

Eustace says nothing. He just chews with his mouth open and stares at me.

Pappy tells the story about the peddler we passed and he makes them laugh.

We eat cornbread and field peas somebody boiled good and soft.

Pappy feels inclined to tell us all again how No-Bob came to be.

It all started when Pappy's pa, Pappy O'Donnell, moved to this part of the country and settled and acquired a good bit of land cheap because the land flooded from the rivers when the rains came. People said the land was of inferior quality, only good for livestock, but that's why Pappy O'Donnell liked it. He said there won't ever be none of those big plantations nearby because nobody would want to live here—the rest of the world would leave us alone.

He raised a might large family. Some say he had twenty-two children, some say twenty-eight. He tried to give all his children a home, and each of them married into another family, and that's when the bad name was given over to the O'Donnells because there was so much feuding over the dividing of the property. Pappy said they wanted to keep the land pure and full of white, Anglo-Saxon O'Donnells.

A spider comes down on a single strand just to say hey. She's swinging in the breeze, happy just to be hanging there, when Pappy says, "Swat it down and step on it."

I don't want to smash the spider. I look at it and whisper to it, "Get."

Pappy comes round the table, swats the spider down, lifts his foot, then looks me in the eye when he stomps down on that spider, and I can't look at the mess on the floor.

The men all wink at each other as they pass around the jug. Pappy drinks from the jug and then he makes a face. Why does he keep drinking that stuff when I know he doesn't like it?

We hear a horse's hoofs with the muffled sound they have clattering across the road. Then we hear the thud of a wooden leg on the front porch.

It is Mr. Smith. He eyes me as he sits down at the table with us. They all four of them do some special handshake and greeting. I can't help but think that it looks to be such foolish, childish business.

Mr. Smith brings news that the sheriff of Raleigh has put out a warrant for his arrest. He stops and looks at Pappy. "They want to arrest you too, Mark. They want the both of us because we are the primary suspects. That's what they say. They won't let this one go."

"What fer?" Smasher asks.

"Burning the schoolhouse that killed that little darky," Mr.
Smith says. "Word in town is folks is sick of all the violence against the darkies. Sheriff is getting pressure from higher-ups." Mr. Smith smiles and says it seems that lynching and brutality has spread all over the state. Smasher laughs and Eustace claps his hands. Mr. Smith goes on to say that he heard that the governor of Mississippi telegraphed President Grant for assistance, only to be told that Mississippi had to take care of its own affairs.

We all look at Pappy, who hasn't said a thing. A long long time ago, Pappy made up his mind he would never go to jail, not ever. He has spent many a night hiding out in Cohay swamp.

He pats my hand. "Don't you worry none, Addy Cakes."

The law's got it wrong. Pappy is bad, but he is not that bad.

He starts to smile. My pappy? He smiles when he's angry, laughs when he fights.

"Well. They gonna have to come get me first. And then, they gonna have to find me." The three of them all have a good laugh, all excepting Pappy.

I hear Mr. Smith whisper to Pappy something about Mr. Frank. I hear him say, "And he's headed home again." Pappy winks at me as if I'm in on it with them.

"Smasher, let's us take care of business before we settle the wedding arrangements," Pappy says.

Smasher looks at me, then nods his head. "All right then."

They drink from the jug and make more faces.

"We'll break him up some," Mr. Smith says. I look at him and think about what his son, Rew Smith, said to me a while back in the schoolyard. He said he wouldn't play with an O'Donnell. He said his pa told him not to. He said his pa said the O'Donnells got the devil in them. Said I was part black myself. This Smith boy, Rew. He would not drink milk after me.

So why is this Mr. Smith sitting down now to eat and drink with the devils?

Mr. Smith takes the jug and drinks after Pappy.

"Christmas is a-coming," Pappy says.

I have such dark winter feelings. I wish it was spring.

Mr. Smith stays the night with Pappy and me, staying low, he says, and the following morning, Pappy goes away all of a sudden with Mr. Smith, Smasher, and Eustace. I sweep the house clean for Christmas. I may have missed my birthday, but I will not miss Christmas. I cut pine and magnolia branches and bring them into the house, hang them over the windows, and lay some on the table. I put pine branches in a jar full of water on the floor and the room smells up sweet and nice.

They come back not but a day later and cover our table
with goods from New Orleans—apples, figs, bananas, pineapples, bolted calico, bullet molds, cutlery, tinware, cooking pots, white flour, and two coconuts. We even have so much coffee, Pappy says he'll drink it now with every meal. Where did he get all this coffee after so many years when we made coffee with dried pea pods, roasted acorns, and once, Momma even sifted the bran from cornmeal to cook it to make coffee?

Pappy does not take notice of the cut branches.

I stare at the bounty on our table. Pappy takes the saber he used on the battlefields that's hanging on the wall, and with it, he cuts one of those coconuts in two, clean and smooth.

"Merry Christmas," he says, giving me half the coconut. "Now go bake us a cake." He joins up with the others and they all ride out, talking loud about where to get hold of some moonshine.

I set out trying to recall how Momma once made a coconut cake, starting with the flour, then the eggs, thinking all the while that it takes almost a week to get to New Orleans and back.

I am frosting a good-looking cake when who comes in through the door but Mr. Frank, the day's sunlight lit up behind his head. His right eye is black but he is smiling to see me, and I rush to him and hug him tight.

"How you doin', Addy?" he whispers.

"Tolerable well," I whisper back.

We break away so we can have a look at each other.

"Miss Irene told me where to find you."

"What happened to your eye?" I ask.

"Never mind about that," he says.