Chapter 10

   Since we didn’t work on Sunday, the house became smaller as my parents and grandparents busied themselves with the few light chores that were permitted. Naps were attempted, then abandoned because of the heat. Occasionally, when the moods were edgy, my parents tossed me in the back of the pickup, and we went for a long drive. There was nothing to see-all the land was flat and covered with cotton. The views were the same as those from our front porch. But it was important to get away.
   Not long after Stick left, I was marched into the garden and ordered to haul food. A road trip was in the making. Two cardboard boxes were filled with vegetables. They were so heavy that my father had to place them in the back of the truck. As we drove off, the Spruills were scattered across the front yard in various stages of rest. I didn’t want to look at them.
   I sat in the back between the boxes of vegetables and watched the dust boil from behind the truck, forming gray clouds that rose quickly and hung over the road in the heavy air before slowly dissipating from the lack of wind. The rain and the mud from the early morning were long forgotten. Everything was hot again: the wooden planks of the truck bed, its rusted and unpainted frame, even the corn and potatoes and tomatoes my mother had just washed. It snowed twice a year in our part of Arkansas, and I longed for a thick, cold blanket of white across our winter fields, cottonless and barren.
   The dust finally stopped at the edge of the river, and we crept across the bridge. I stood to see the water below, the thick brown stream barely moving along the banks. There were two cane poles in the back of the truck, and my father had promised we’d fish for a while after the food was delivered.
   The Latchers were sharecroppers who lived no more than a mile from our house, but they might as well have been in another county. Their run-down shack was in a bend of the river, with elms and willows touching the roof and cotton growing almost to the front porch. There was no grass around the house, just a ring of dirt where a horde of little Latchers played. I was secretly happy that they lived on the other side of the river. Otherwise, I might have been expected to play with them.
   They farmed thirty acres and split the crop with the owner of the land. Half of a little left nothing, and the Latchers were dirt-poor. They had no electricity, no car or truck. Occasionally, Mr. Latcher would walk to our house and ask Pappy for a ride on the next trip to Black Oak.
   The trail to their house was barely wide enough for our truck, and when we rolled to a stop, the porch was already filled with dirty little faces. I had once counted seven Latcher kids, but an accurate total was impossible. It was hard to tell the boys from the girls; all had shaggy hair, narrow faces with the same pale blue eyes, and they all wore raggedy clothes.
   Mrs. Latcher emerged from the decrepit porch, wiping her hands on her apron. She managed to smile at my mother. “Hello, Mrs. Chandler,” she said in a soft voice. She was barefoot, and her legs were as skinny as twigs.
   “Nice to see you, Darla,” my mother said. My father busied himself at the back of the truck, fiddling with the boxes, killing time while the ladies handled the chitchat. We did not expect to see Mr. Latcher. Pride would prevent him from coming forward and accepting food. Let the women take care of it.
   As they talked about the harvest and how hot it was, I moved away from the truck, under the watchful eyes of all those kids. I walked to the side of the house, where the tallest boy was loafing in the shade, trying to ignore us. His name was Percy, and he claimed to be twelve, though I had my doubts. He didn’t look big enough to be twelve, but since the Latchers didn’t go to school, it was impossible to lump him together with boys his own age. He was shirtless and barefoot, his skin a dark bronze from hours in the sun.
   “Hi, Percy,” I said, but he did not respond. Sharecroppers were funny like that. Sometimes they would speak, other times they just gave you a blank look, as if they wanted you to leave them alone.
   I studied their house, a square little box, and wondered once more how so many people could live in such a tiny place. Our tool shed was almost as large. The windows were open, and the torn remains of curtains hung still. There were no screens to keep the flies and mosquitoes out, and certainly no fans to push the air around.
   I felt very sorry for them. Gran was fond of quoting the Scriptures: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” and “The poor will always be with you.” But it seemed cruel for anyone to live in such conditions. They had no shoes. Their clothes were so old and worn, they were embarrassed to go to town. And because they had no electricity, they couldn’t listen to the Cardinals.
   Percy had never owned a ball or a glove or a bat, had never played catch with his dad, had never dreamed of beating the Yankees. In fact, he’d probably never dreamed of leaving the cotton patch. That thought was almost overwhelming.
   My father produced the first box of vegetables while my mother called out its contents, and the Latcher kids moved onto the front steps, eagerly looking on but still keeping their distance. Percy didn’t move; he stared at something in the fields, something neither he nor I could see.
   There was a girl in the house. Her name was Libby, age fifteen, the oldest of the brood, and according to the latest rumors in Black Oak, she was pregnant. The father had yet to be named; in fact, the gossip currently held that she was refusing to reveal to anyone, including her parents, the name of the boy who’d gotten her pregnant.
   Such gossip was more than Black Oak could stand. War news, a fist-fight, a case of cancer, a car wreck, a new baby on the way from two people lawfully wed-all these events kept the talk flying. A death followed by a good funeral, and the town buzzed for days. An arrest of even the lowliest of citizens was an event to be dissected for weeks. But a fifteen-year-old girl, even a sharecropper’s daughter, having an illegitimate baby was something so extraordinary that the town was beside itself. Problem was, the pregnancy had not been confirmed. Only rumored. Since the Latchers never left the farm, it was proving to be quite difficult to nail down the evidence. And since we lived closest to them, it had apparently fallen upon my mother to investigate.
   She had enlisted me to help with the verifying. She’d shared some of the gossip with me, and because I’d been watching farm animals breed and reproduce all my life, I knew the basics. But I was still reluctant to get involved. Nor was I completely certain why we had to confirm the pregnancy. It had been talked about so much that the entire town already believed the poor girl was expecting. The big mystery was the identity of the father. “They ain’t gonna pin it on me,” I’d heard Pappy say at the Co-op, and all the old men roared with laughter.
   “How’s the cotton?” I asked Percy. Just a couple of real farmers.
   “Still out there,” he said, nodding at the fields, which began just a few feet away. I turned and stared at their cotton, which looked the same as ours. I was paid $1.60 for every hundred pounds I picked. Sharecropper children were paid nothing.
   Then I looked at the house again, at the windows and the curtains and the sagging boards, and I stared into the backyard, where their wash hung on the clothesline. I studied the stretch of dirt that led past their outhouse to the river, and there was no sign of Libby Latcher. They probably had her locked in a room, with Mr. Latcher guarding the door with a shotgun. One day she’d have the baby, and no one would know it. Just another Latcher running around naked.
   “My sister ain’t here,” he said, still lost in the distance. “That’s what you’re lookin’ for.”
   My mouth fell open, and my cheeks got very hot. All I could say was, “What?”
   “She ain’t here. Now get back to your truck.”
   My father hauled the rest of the food onto the porch, and I walked away from Percy.
   “Did you see her?” my mother whispered as we were leaving. I shook my head.
   As we drove away, the Latchers were crawling over and around the two boxes as if they hadn’t eaten in a week.
   We’d return in a few days with another load of produce in a second attempt to confirm the rumors. As long as they kept Libby hidden, the Latchers would be well fed.

   The St. Francis River was fifty feet deep, according to my father, and around the bottom of the bridge pier there were channel catfish that weighed sixty pounds and ate everything that floated within reach. They were large, dirty fish-scavengers that moved only when food was nearby. Some lived for twenty years. According to family legend, Ricky caught one of the monsters when he was thirteen. It weighed forty-four pounds, and when he slit its belly with a cleaning knife, all sorts of debris spilled onto the tailgate of Pappy’s truck: a spark plug, a marble, lots of half-eaten minnows and small fish, two pennies, and some suspicious matter that was eventually determined to be human waste.
   Gran never fried another catfish. Pappy gave up river food altogether.
   With red worms as bait, I fished the shallow backwaters around a sandbar for bream and crappie, two small species that were plentiful and easy to catch. I waded barefoot through the warm, swirling waters and occasionally heard my mother yell, “That’s far enough, Luke!” The bank was lined with oaks and willows, and the sun was behind them. My parents sat in the shade, on one of the many quilts the ladies at the church made during the winter, and shared a cantaloupe from our garden.
   They talked softly, almost in whispers, and I didn’t try to listen, because it was one of the few moments during the picking season when they could be alone. At night, after a day in the fields, sleep came fast and hard, and I rarely heard them talk in bed. They sometimes sat on the porch in the darkness, waiting for the heat to pass, but they weren’t really alone.
   The river scared me enough to keep me safe. I had not yet learned to swim-I was waiting for Ricky to come home. He had promised to teach me the next summer, when I would be eight. I stayed close to the bank, where the water barely covered my feet.
   Drownings were not uncommon, and all my life I’d heard colorful tales of grown men caught in shifting sandbanks and being swept away while entire families watched in horror. Calm waters could somehow turn violent, though I’d never witnessed this myself. The mother of all drownings supposedly took place in the St. Francis, though the exact location varied according to the narrator. A small child was sitting innocently on a sandbar when suddenly it shifted, and the child was surrounded by water and sinking fast. An older sibling saw it happen and dashed into the swirling waters, only to be met with a fierce current that carried him away, too. Next, an even older sibling heard the cries of the first two, and she charged into the river and was waist-deep before she remembered she couldn’t swim. Undaunted, she bravely thrashed onward, yelling at the younger two to hold steady, she’d get there somehow. But the sandbar collapsed entirely, sort of like an earthquake, and new currents went in all directions.
   The three children were drifting farther and farther away from shore. The mother, who may or may not have been pregnant, and who may or may not have been able to swim, was fixing lunch under a shade tree when she heard the screams of her children. She flung herself into the river, whereupon she, too, was soon in trouble.
   The father was fishing off a bridge when he heard the commotion, and rather than waste time running to the shore and entering from that venue, he simply jumped headlong into the St. Francis and broke his neck.
   The entire family perished. Some of the bodies were found. Some were not. Some were eaten by the channel cats, and the others were swept out to sea, wherever the sea was. There was no shortage of theories as to what finally happened to the bodies of this poor family, which, oddly, had remained nameless through the decades.
   This story was repeated so that kids like myself would appreciate the dangers of the river. Ricky loved to scare me with it, but often got his versions confused. My mother said it was all fiction.
   Even Brother Akers managed to weave it through a sermon to illustrate how Satan was always at work spreading misery and heartache around the world. I was awake and listening very closely, and when he left out the part about the broken neck, I figured he was exaggerating, too.
   But I was determined not to drown. The fish were biting, small bream that I hooked and threw back. I found a seat on a stump near a lagoon and caught one fish after another. It was almost as much fun as playing baseball. The afternoon passed slowly by, and I was thankful for the solitude. Our farm was crowded with strangers. The fields were waiting with the promise of backbreaking labor. I’d seen a man get killed, and I had somehow gotten myself in the middle of it.
   The gentle rushing sound of the shallow water was soothing. Why couldn’t I just fish all day? Sit by the river in the shade? Anything but pick cotton. I wasn’t going to be a farmer. I didn’t need the practice.
   “Luke,” came my father’s voice from down the bank. I pulled in the hook and worm, and walked to where they were sitting.
   “Yes sir,” I said.
   “Sit down,” he said. “Let’s talk.”
   I sat at the very edge of the quilt, as far from them as possible. They didn’t appear to be angry; in fact, my mother’s face was pleasant.
   But my father’s voice was stern enough to worry me. “Why didn’t you tell us about the fight?” he asked.
   The fight that wouldn’t go away.
   I wasn’t really surprised to hear the question. “I was scared, I guess.”
   “Scared of what?”
   “Scared of gettin’ caught behind the Co-op watchin’ a fight.”
   “Because I told you not to, right?” asked my mother.
   “Yes ma’am. And I’m sorry.”
   Watching a fight was not a major act of disobedience, and all three of us knew it. What were boys supposed to do on Saturday afternoon when the town was packed and excitement was high? She smiled because I said I was sorry. I was trying to look as pitiful as possible.
   “I’m not too worried about you watchin’ a fight,” my father said.
   “But secrets can get you in trouble. You shoulda told me what you saw.”
   “I saw a fight. I didn’t know Jerry Sisco was gonna die.”
   My logic stopped him for a moment. Then he said, “Did you tell Stick Powers the truth?”
   “Yes sir.”
   “Did one of the Siscos pick up the piece of wood first? Or was it Hank Spruill?”
   If I told the truth, then I would be admitting that I had lied in my earlier version. Tell the truth or tell a lie, that was the question that always remained. I decided to try to blur things a bit. “Well, to be honest, Dad, things happened so fast. There were bodies fallin’ and flyin’ everywhere. Hank was just throwin’ those boys around like little toys. And the crowd was movin’ and hollerin’. Then I saw a stick; of wood.” I
   Surprisingly, this satisfied him. After all, I was only seven years old,. and had been caught up in a mob of spectators, all watching a horrible brawl unfold behind the Co-op. Who could blame me if I wasn’t sure about what happened?
   “Don’t talk to anyone about this, all right? Not a soul.”
   “Yes sir.”
   “Little boys who keep secrets from their parents get into big trouble,” my mother said. “You can always tell us.”
   “Yes ma’am.”
   “Now go fish some more,” my father said, and I ran back to my spot.

Chapter 11

   The week began in the semidarkness of Monday morning. We met at the trailer for the ride into the fields, a ride that grew shorter each day as the picking slowly moved away from the river back toward the house.
   Not a word was spoken. Before us were five endless days of overwhelming labor and heat, followed by Saturday, which on Monday seemed as far away as Christmas.
   I looked down from my perch on the tractor and prayed for the day when the Spruills would leave our farm. They were grouped together, as dazed and sleepy as I was. Trot was not with them, nor would he be joining us in the fields. Late Sunday, Mr. Spruill had asked Pappy if it would be all right if Trot hung around the front yard all day. “The boy can’t take the heat,” Mr. Spruill said. Pappy didn’t care what happened to Trot. He wasn’t worth a nickel in the fields.
   When the tractor stopped, we took our sacks and disappeared into the rows of cotton. Not a word from anyone. An hour later, the sun was baking us. I thought of Trot, wasting the day under the shade tree, napping when he felt like it, no doubt happy about the work he was missing. He might have been a little off in the head, but right then he was the smartest of all the Spruills.
   Time stopped when we were picking cotton. The days dragged on, each yielding ever so slowly to the next.
   Over supper on Thursday, Pappy announced, “We won’t be goin’ to town Saturday.”
   I felt like crying. It was harsh enough to labor in the fields all week, but to do so without the reward of popcorn and a movie was downright cruel. What about my weekly Coca-Cola?
   A long silence followed. My mother watched me carefully. She did not seem surprised, and I got the impression that the adults had already had this discussion. Now they were just going through the motions for my benefit.
   I thought, What is there to lose? So I gritted my teeth and said, “Why not?”
   “Because I said so,” Pappy fired back at me, and I knew I was in dangerous territory.
   I looked at my mother. There was a curious grin on her face.
   “You’re not scared of the Siscos, are you?” I asked, and I half-expected one of the men to make a grab for me.
   There was a moment of deathly silence. My father cleared his throat and said, “It’s best if the Spruills stay out of town for a while. We’ve discussed it with Mr. Spruill, and we’ve agreed that we’ll all stay put Saturday. Even the Mexicans.”
   “I ain’t afraid of nobody, son,” Pappy growled down the table. I refused to look at him. “And don’t sass me,” he threw in for good measure.
   My mother’s grin was still firmly in place, and her eyes were twinkling. She was proud of me.
   “I’ll need a couple of things from the store,” Gran said. “Some flour and sugar.”
   “I’ll run in,” Pappy said. “I’m sure the Mexicans’ll need some things, too.”
   Later, they moved to the front porch for our ritual of sitting, but I was too wounded to join them. I lay on the floor of Ricky’s room, in the darkness, listening to the Cardinals through the open window and trying to ignore the soft, slow talk of the adults. I tried to think of new ways to hate the Spruills, but I was soon overwhelmed by the sheer volume of their misdeeds. At some point in the early evening, I grew too still, and fell asleep on the floor.

   Lunch on Saturday was usually a happy time. The work week was over. We were going to town. If I could survive the Saturday scrubbing on the back porch, then life was indeed wonderful, if only for a few hours.
   But on this Saturday there was no excitement. “We’ll work till four,” Pappy said, as if he was doing us a real favor. Big deal. We’d knock off an hour early. I wanted to ask him if we were going to work on Sunday, too, but I’d said enough on Thursday night. He was ignoring me and I was ignoring him. This type of pouting could go on for days.
   So we went back to the fields instead of going to Black Oak. Even the Mexicans seemed irritated by this. When the trailer stopped, we took our sacks and slowly disappeared into the cotton. I picked a little and stalled a lot, and when things were safe, I found a spot and went down for a nap. They could banish me from town, they could force me into the fields, but they couldn’t make me work hard. I think there were a lot of naps that Saturday afternoon.
   My mother found me, and we walked to the house, just the two of us. She was not feeling well, and she also knew the injustice that was being inflicted upon me. We gathered some vegetables from the garden, but only a few things. I suffered through and survived the dreaded bath. And when I was clean, I ventured into the front yard, where Trot was spending his days guarding Camp Spruill. We had no idea what he did all day; no one really cared. We were too busy and too tired to worry about Trot. I found him sitting behind the wheel of their truck, pretending he was driving, making a strange sound with his lips. He glanced at me and returned to his driving and sputtering.
   When I heard the tractor coming, I went into the house, where I found my mother lying on her bed, something she never did during the day. There were voices around, tired voices in the front, where the Spruills were unwinding, and in the rear, where the Mexicans were dragging themselves to the barn. I hid in Ricky’s room for a while, a baseball in one hand, a glove on the other, and I thought of Dewayne and the Montgomery twins and the rest of my friends all sitting in the Dixie watching the Saturday feature and eating popcorn.
   The door opened and Pappy appeared. “I’m goin’ to Pop and Pearl’s for a few things. You wanna go?”
   I shook my head no, without looking at him.
   “I’ll buy you a Coca-Cola,” he said.
   “No thanks,” I said, still staring at the floor.
   Eli Chandler wouldn’t beg for mercy in front of a firing squad, and he wasn’t about to plead with a seven-year-old. The door closed, and seconds later the truck engine started.
   Wary of the front yard, I headed for the back. Near the silo, where the Spruills were supposed to be camping, there was a grassy area where baseball could be played. It wasn’t as long and wide as my field in the front, but it was open enough and ran to the edge of the cotton. I tossed pop flies as high as I could, and I stopped only after I’d caught ten in a row.
   Miguel appeared from nowhere. He watched me for a minute, and under the pressure of an audience, I dropped three in a row. I tossed him the ball, gently, because he had no glove. He caught it effortlessly and snapped it back to me. I bobbled it, dropped it, kicked it, then grabbed it and threw it back to him, this time a little harder.
   I had learned the previous year that a lot of Mexicans played baseball, and it was obvious that Miguel knew the game. His hands were quick and soft, his throws sharper than mine. We tossed the ball for a few minutes, then Rico and Pepe and Luis joined us.
   “You have a bat?” Miguel asked.
   “Sure,” I said, and ran to the house to get it.
   When I returned, Roberto and Pablo had joined the others, and the group was flinging my baseball in all directions. “You bat,” Miguel said, and he took charge. He put a piece of an old plank on the ground, ten feet in front of the silo, and said, “Home plate.” The others scattered throughout the infield. Pablo, in shallow center, was at the edge of the cotton. Rico squatted behind me, and I took my position on the right side of the plate. Miguel performed a fierce windup, scared me for a second, then tossed a soft one that I swung at mightily but missed.
   I also missed the next three, then ripped a couple. The Mexicans cheered and laughed when I made contact, but said nothing when I didn’t. After a few minutes of batting practice, I gave the bat to Miguel and we swapped places. I started him with fastballs, and he didn’t appear to be intimidated. He hit line drives and hot grounders, some of which were fielded cleanly by the Mexicans, while others were simply retrieved. Most of them had played before, but a couple had never even thrown a baseball.
   The other four at the barn heard the commotion and they wandered over. Cowboy was shirtless, and his pants were rolled up to his knees. He seemed to be a foot taller than the rest.
   Luis hit next. He wasn’t as experienced as Miguel, and I had no trouble fooling him with my change-up. Much to my delight, I noticed Tally and Trot sitting under an elm, watching the fun.
   Then my father strolled over.
   The longer we played, the more animated the Mexicans became. They hollered and laughed at one another’s miscues. God only knew what they were saying about my pitching.
   “Let’s play a game,” my father said. Bo and Dale had arrived, also shirtless and shoeless. Miguel was consulted, and after a few minutes of plotting, it was decided that the Mexicans would play the Arkansans. Rico would catch for both teams, and again I was sent to the house, this time to fetch my father’s old catcher’s mitt and my other ball.
   When I returned the second time, Hank had appeared and was ready to play. I was not happy about being on the same team with him, but I certainly couldn’t say anything. Nor was I certain where Trot would fit in. And Tally was a girl. What a disgrace: a girl for a teammate. Still, the Mexicans had us outnumbered.
   Another round of plotting, and it was somehow determined that we would bat first. “You have little guys,” Miguel said with a smile. More planks were laid around as bases. My father and Miguel established the ground rules, which were quite creative for such a misshapen field. The Mexicans scattered around the bases, and we were ready to play.
   To my surprise, Cowboy walked out to the mound and began warming up. He was lean but strong, and when he threw the ball, the muscles in his chest and shoulders bulged and creased. The sweat made his dark skin shine. “He’s good,” my father said softly. His windup was smooth, his delivery seamless, his release almost nonchalant, but the baseball shot from his fingers and popped into Rico’s mitt. He threw harder and harder. “He’s very good,” my father said, shaking his head. “That boy’s played a lot of baseball.”
   “Girls first,” somebody said. Tally picked up the bat and walked to the plate. She was shoeless, and wearing tight pants rolled up to her knees and a loose shirt with its tail tied in a knot. You could see her stomach. At first, she didn’t look at Cowboy, but he was certainly staring at her. He moved a few feet toward the plate and tossed the first pitch underhanded. She swung and missed, but it was an impressive swing, at least for a girl.
   Then their eyes met briefly. Cowboy was rubbing the baseball, Tally was swinging the bat, nine Mexicans were chattering like locusts.
   The second pitch was even slower, and Tally made contact. The ball rolled by Pepe at third, and we had our first base runner. “Bat, Luke,” my father said. I strolled to the plate with all the confidence of Stan Musial, hoping that Cowboy wouldn’t throw the hard stuff at me. He let Tally hit one, surely he’d do the same for me. I stood in the box, listening as thousands of rabid Cardinal fans chanted my name. A packed house, Harry Caray yelling into the microphone-then I looked at Cowboy thirty feet away, and my heart stopped. He wasn’t smiling, nothing close. He held the baseball with both hands and looked at me as if he could saw my head off with a fastball.
   What would Musial do? Swing the damned bat!
   The first pitch was also underhanded, so I started breathing again. It was high, and I didn’t swing, and the Mexican chorus had a lot to say about that. The second pitch was down the middle, and I swung for the fence, for the left field wall, 350 feet away. I closed my eyes and swung for the thirty thousand lucky souls in Sportsman’s Park. I also swung for Tally.
   “Strike one!” my father yelled, a little too loud, I thought. “You’re tryin’ to kill it, Luke,” he said.
   Of course I was. I tried to kill the third pitch, too, and when Rico threw it back, I was faced with the horror of being down two strikes. A strikeout was unthinkable. Tally had just hit the ball nicely. She was on first base, anxious for me to put the ball in play so she could advance. We were playing on my field, with my ball and bat. All of those people were watching.
   I stepped away from the plate and was stricken with the terror of striking out. The bat was suddenly heavier. My heart was pounding, my mouth was dry. I looked at my father for help, and he said, “Let’s go, Luke. Hit the ball.” I looked at Cowboy, and his nasty smile was even nastier. I did not know if I was ready for what he was going to throw.
   I stutter-stepped back to the plate, gritted my teeth, and tried to think of Musial, but my only thoughts were of defeat, and I swung at a very slow pitch. When I missed for the third time, there was total silence. I dropped the bat, picked it up, and heard nothing as I walked back to my team, my lip quivering, already daring myself not to cry. I couldn’t look at Tally, and I sure couldn’t look at my father.
   I wanted to run into the house and lock the doors.
   Trot was next, and he held the bat with his right hand just under the label. His left arm hung limp, as always, and we were a little embarrassed at the sight of this poor kid trying to swing. But he was smiling and happy to be playing, and that was more important than anything else at the moment. He hacked at the first two, and I began to think the Mexicans would beat us by twenty runs. Somehow, though, he hit the third pitch, a gentle looping fly that landed behind second base, where at least four Mexicans managed to miss it. Tally flew around second and made it to third, while Trot shuffled down to first.
   My humiliation, already enormous, grew even greater. Trot on first, Tally on third, only one out.
   Bo was next, and because he was a large teenager with no visible handicaps, Cowboy stepped back and threw from a full windup. His first pitch was not too fast, but poor Bo was already shaking by the time the ball crossed home plate. He swung after Rico caught it, and Hank roared with laughter. Bo told him to shut up; Hank made some response, and I thought we might have a Spruill family brawl in the top of the first inning.
   The second pitch was a little faster. Bo’s swing was a little slower. “Make him throw it underhand!” Bo yelled at us, trying to laugh it off.
   “What a sissy,” Hank said. Mr. and Mrs. Spruill had joined the spectators, and Bo glanced at them.
   I expected the third pitch to be even faster; so did Bo. Cowboy instead threw a change-up, and Bo swung long before the ball arrived.
   “He’s mighty good,” my father said of Cowboy.
   “I’m hittin’ next,” Hank announced, stepping in front of Dale, who didn’t argue. “I’ll show you boys how it’s done.”
   The bat looked like a toothpick as Hank hacked and chopped with his practice swings, as if he might hit the ball across the river. Cowboy’s first pitch was a fastball away, and Hank didn’t swing. It popped into Rico’s glove, and the Mexicans erupted in another burst of Spanish jeering.
   “Throw the ball over the plate!” Hank yelled as he looked at us for approval. I was hoping Cowboy would drill a fastball into his ear.
   The second pitch was much harder. Hank swung and missed. Cowboy caught the ball from Rico, and glanced over at third, where Tally was waiting and watching.
   Then Cowboy threw a curve, a pitch that went straight for Hank’s head, but as he ducked and dropped the bat, the baseball broke and fell magically through the strike zone. The Mexicans roared with laughter. “Strike!” Miguel yelled from second base.
   “Ain’t no strike!” Hank yelled, his face red.
   “No umpires,” my father said. “It’s not a strike unless he swings at it.”
   Fine with Cowboy. He had another curve in his arsenal. It at first appeared quite harmless, a slow fat pitch headed toward the center of the plate. Hank reached back for a massive swing. The ball, however, broke down and away and bounced before Rico blocked it. Hank hit nothing but air. He lost his balance and fell across the plate, and when the Spanish chorus exploded again, I thought he might attack all of them. He stood up, squinted at Cowboy and mumbled something, then resumed his position at the plate.
   Two outs, two strikes, two on. Cowboy finished him off with a fast-ball. Hank speared the bat into the ground when he finishing flailing at the pitch.
   “Don’t throw the bat!” my father said loudly. “If you can’t be a sport, then don’t play.” We were walking onto the field as the Mexicans hurried off.
   Hank gave my father a look of disgust, but he said nothing. For some reason it was determined that I would pitch. “Throw the first inning, Luke,” my father said. I didn’t want to. I was no match for Cowboy. We were about to be embarrassed at our own game.
   Hank was at first, Bo at second, Dale at third. Tally was in left-center, hands on hips, and Trot was in right field looking for four-leaf clovers. What a defense! With my pitching we needed to put all of our fielders as far away from home plate as possible.
   Miguel sent Roberto to the plate first, and I was sure this was deliberate, because the poor guy had never seen a baseball. He hit a lazy pop-up that my father caught at shortstop. Pepe hit a fly ball that my father caught behind second base. Two up, two outs, I was on a roll, but my luck was about to run out. The serious sticks lined up, one after the other, and hit baseballs all over our farm. I tried fastballs, curveballs, change-ups, it didn’t matter. They scored runs by the truckload, and had a delightful time doing it. I was miserable because I was getting shelled, but it was also amusing to watch the Mexicans dance and celebrate as the rout hit full stride.
   My mother and Gran were sitting under a tree, watching the spectacle with Mr. and Mrs. Spruill. Everyone was accounted for except Pappy, who was still in town.
   When they’d scored about ten runs, my father called time and walked to the mound. “You had enough?” he asked.
   What a ridiculous question. “I suppose,” I said.
   “Take a break,” he said.
   “I can pitch,” Hank yelled from first base. My father hesitated for a second, then tossed him the ball. I wanted to go to right field, out with Trot, where there wasn’t much happening, but my coach said, “Go to first.”
   I knew from experience that Hank Spruill had remarkable quickness. He had taken down the three Siscos in a matter of seconds. So it was no great surprise to see him throw a baseball as if he’d been throwing one for years. He looked confident taking his windup and catching the ball from Rico. He threw three nice fastballs by Luis, and the first inning massacre was over. Miguel informed my father that they had scored eleven runs. It seemed like fifty.
   Cowboy returned to the mound and took up where he left off. Dale went down on strikes, and my father stepped to the plate. He anticipated a fastball, got one, and ripped it hard, a long fly ball that curved foul and landed deep in the cotton patch. Pablo went to search for it while we used my other ball. Under no circumstances would we leave the game until both baseballs were accounted for.
   The second pitch was a hard curve, and my father’s knees buckled before he read the pitch. “That was a strike,” he said, shaking his head in wonder. “It was also a major league curveball,” he said just loud enough to be heard but to no one in particular.
   He flied to shallow center, where Miguel cradled the ball with both hands, and the team from Arkansas was about to get shut out again. Tally strolled to the plate. Cowboy stopped his scowling and walked halfway in. He tossed a couple underhanded, trying to hit her bat, and she finally hit a slow roller to second, where two Mexicans fought over it long enough for the runner to be safe.
   I was next. “Choke up a little,” my father said, and I did. I would’ve done anything. Cowboy tossed one even slower, a lazy looping pitch that I smacked to center field. The Mexicans went wild. Everyone cheered. I was a little embarrassed by all the fuss, but it sure beat striking out. The pressure was off; my future as a Cardinal was back on track.
   Trot swung at the first three and missed them all by at least a foot. “Four strikes,” Miguel said, and the rules were changed again. When you’re leading by eleven runs in the second inning, you can afford to be generous. Trot chopped at the pitch, and the ball rolled back to Cowboy, who just for the fun of it threw to third in a vain effort to catch Tally. She was safe; the bases were loaded. The Mexicans were trying to give us runs. Bo walked to the plate, but Cowboy did not retreat to the mound. He lobbed one underhanded, and Bo hit a scorching ground ball to short, where Pablo lunged to avoid it. Tally scored, and I moved to third.
   Hank picked up the bat and ripped a few practice swings. With the bases loaded, he was thinking of only one thing-a grand slam. Cowboy had other plans. He stepped back and stopped smiling. Hank hovered over the plate, staring down the pitcher, daring him to throw something he could hit.
   The infield noise died for a moment; the Mexicans crept forward, on their toes, anxious to take part in this encounter. The first pitch was a blistering fastball that crossed the plate a fraction of a second after Cowboy released it. Hank never thought about swinging; he never had the chance. He backed away from the plate and seemed to concede that he was overmatched. I glanced at my father, who was shaking his head. How hard could Cowboy throw?
   Then he threw a fat curve, one that looked tempting but broke out of the strike zone. Hank ripped but never got close. Then a hard curve, one that went straight at his head and, at the last second, dipped across the plate. Hank’s face was blood-red.
   Another fastball that Hank lunged at. Two strikes, bases loaded, two outs. Without the slightest hint of a smile, Cowboy decided to play a little. He threw a slow curve that broke outside, then a harder one that made Hank duck. Then another slow one that he almost chopped at. I got the impression that Cowboy could wrap a baseball around Hank’s head if he wanted. The defense was chattering again, at full volume.
   Strike three was a knuckleball that floated up to the plate and looked slow enough for me to hit. But it wobbled and dipped. Hank took a mighty swing, missed by a foot, and again landed in the dirt. He screamed a nasty word and threw the bat near my father.
   “Watch your language,” my father said, picking up the bat.
   Hank mumbled something else and dusted himself off. Our half of the inning was over.
   Miguel walked to the plate in the bottom of the second. Hank’s first pitch went straight for his head, almost hitting it. The ball bounced off the silo and rolled to a stop near third base. The Mexicans were silent. The second pitch was even harder, and two feet inside. Again, Miguel hit the dirt, and his teammates began mumbling.
   “Stop the foolishness!” my father said loudly from shortstop. “Just throw strikes.”
   Hank offered him his customary sneer. He threw the ball over the plate, and Miguel slapped it to right field, where Trot was playing defense with his back to home plate, staring at the distant tree line of the St. Francis River. Tally raced after the ball and stopped when she reached the edge of the cotton. A ground rule triple.
   The next pitch was the last of the game. Cowboy was the batter. Hank reached back for all the juice he could find, and he hurled a fastball directly at Cowboy. He ducked but didn’t move back fast enough, and the ball hit him square in the ribs with the sickening sound of a melon landing on bricks. Cowboy emitted a quick scream, but just as quickly he threw my bat like a tomahawk, end over end with all the speed he could muster. It didn’t land where it should have-between Hank’s eyes. Instead, it bounced at his feet and ricocheted off his shins. He screamed an obscenity and instantly charged like a crazed bull.
   Others charged, too. My father from shortstop. Mr. Spruill from beside the silo. Some of the Mexicans. Me, I didn’t move. I held my ground at first base, too horrified to take a step. Everyone seemed to be yelling and running toward home plate.
   Cowboy retreated not a step. He stood perfectly still for a second, his brown skin wet, his long arms taut and ready, and his teeth showing. When the bull was a few feet away, Cowboy’s hands moved quickly around his pockets and a knife appeared. He jerked it, and a very long switchblade popped free-shiny, glistening steel, no doubt very sharp. It snapped when it sprang open, a sharp click that I would hear for years to come.
   He held it high for all to see, and Hank skidded to a stop.
   “Put it down!” he yelled from five feet away.
   With his left hand, Cowboy made a slight, beckoning motion, as if to say, Come on, big boy. Come and get it.
   The knife shocked everyone, and for a few seconds there was silence. No one moved. The only sound was heavy breathing. Hank was staring at the blade, which seemed to grow. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Cowboy had used it before, knew how to use it well, and would happily behead Hank if he took another step closer.
   Then my father, holding the bat, stepped between the two, and Miguel appeared beside Cowboy.
   “Put it down,” Hank said again. “Fight like a man.”
   “Shut up!” my father said, waving the bat around at both of them. “Ain’t nobody fightin’.”
   Mr. Spruill grabbed Hank’s arm and said, “Let’s go, Hank.”
   My father looked at Miguel and said, “Get him back to the barn.”
   Slowly, the other Mexicans grouped around Cowboy and sort of shoved him away. He finally turned and began walking, the switchblade still very much in view. Hank, of course, wouldn’t budge. He stood and watched the Mexicans leave, as if by doing so he was claiming victory.
   “I’m gonna kill that boy,” he said.
   “You’ve killed enough,” my father said. “Now leave. And stay away from the barn.”
   “Let’s go,” Mr. Spruill said again, and the others-Trot, Tally, Bo, and Dale-began to drift toward the front yard. When the Mexicans were out of sight, Hank stomped away. “I’m gonna kill him,” he mumbled, just loud enough for my father to hear.
   I collected the baseballs, the gloves, and the bat, and hurried after my parents and Gran.

Chapter 12

   Later that afternoon, Tally found me in the backyard. It was the first time I’d seen her walk around the farm, though as the days passed, the Spruills showed more interest in exploring the area.
   She was carrying a small bag. She was barefoot but had changed into the same tight dress she’d been wearing the first time I’d seen her.
   “Will you do me a favor, Luke?” she asked ever so sweetly. My cheeks turned red. I had no idea what favor she wanted, but there was no doubt she’d get it from me.
   “What?” I asked, trying to be difficult.
   “Your grandma told my mom that there’s a creek close by where we can bathe. Do you know where it is?”
   “Yeah. Siler’s Creek. ‘Bout a half a mile that way,” I said, pointing to the north.
   “Are there any snakes?”
   I laughed like snakes shouldn’t bother anyone. “Maybe just a little water snake or two. No cottonmouths.”
   “And the water’s clear, not muddy?”
   “Should be clear. It hasn’t rained since Sunday.”
   She looked around to make sure no one was listening, then she said, “Will you go with me?”
   My heart stopped, and my mouth was suddenly dry. “Why?” I managed to ask.
   She grinned again and rolled her eyes away.
   “I don’t know,” she cooed. “To make sure nobody sees me.”
   She could’ve said, “Because I don’t know where the creek is,” or “To make sure there are no snakes.” Or something, anything that had nothing to do with seeing her bathe.
   But she didn’t.
   “Are you scared?” I asked.
   “Maybe a little.”
   We took the field road until the house and barn were out of sight, then turned onto a narrow path we used for spring planting. Once we were alone, she began to talk. I had no idea what to say, and I was relieved that she knew how to handle the situation.
   “I’m real sorry ‘bout Hank,” she said. “He’s always causin’ trouble.”
   “Did you see the fight?” I asked.
   “Which one?”
   “The one in town.”
   “No. Was it awful?”
   “Yeah, pretty bad. He beat those boys so bad. He beat ‘em long after the fight was over.”
   She stopped, then I stopped, too. She walked close to me, both of us breathing heavily. “Tell me the truth, Luke. Did he pick up that stick first?”
   Looking at her beautiful brown eyes, I almost said, “Yes.” But in a flash something caught me. I thought I’d better play it safe. He was, after all, her brother, and in the midst of one of the many Spruill fights, she might tell him everything I said. Blood’s thicker than water, Ricky always said. I didn’t want Hank coming after me.
   “It happened real fast,” I said, and started walking off. She caught up immediately and said nothing for a few minutes.
   “Do you think they’ll arrest him?” she asked.
   “I don’t know.”
   “What does your grandpa think?”
   “Hell if I know.” I thought I might impress her by using some of Ricky’s words.
   “Luke, your language!” she said, quite unimpressed.
   “Sorry.” We walked on. “Has he ever killed anybody before?” I asked.
   “Not that I know of,” she said.
   “He went up North once,” she continued as we approached the creek. “And there was some trouble. But we never knew what happened.”
   I was certain there was trouble wherever Hank went.
   Siler’s Creek ran along the northern boundary of our farm, where it snaked its way into the St. Francis, at a point you could almost see from the bridge. Heavy trees lined both sides, so in the summer it was usually a cool place to swim and bathe. It would dry up, though, and quickly, and more often than not, there wasn’t much water.
   I led her down the bank to a gravel bar, where the water was deepest. “This is the best spot,” I said.
   “How deep is it?” she asked, looking around.
   The water was clear. “ ‘Bout here,” I said, touching a spot not far below my chin.
   “There’s nobody around here, right?” She seemed a bit nervous.
   “No. Everybody’s back at the farm.”
   “You go back up by the trail and look out for me, okay?”
   “Okay,” I said, without moving.
   “Go on, Luke,” she said, placing her bag on the bank.
   “Okay,” I said, and started away.
   “And, Luke, no peeking, okay?”
   I felt as if I’d just been caught. I waved her off as if the thought hadn’t crossed my mind. “Of course not,” I said.
   I crawled up the bank and found a spot a few feet above the ground, on the limb of an elm. Perched there, I could almost see the top of our barn.
   “Luke!” she called.
   “Yes!”
   “Is everything clear?”
   “Yep!”
   I heard water splash but kept my eyes to the south. After a minute or two, I slowly turned around and looked down the creek. I couldn’t see her, and I was somewhat relieved. The gravel bar was just around a slight bend, and the trees and limbs were thick.
   Another minute passed, and I began to feel useless. No one knew we were here, so no one would be trying to sneak up on her. How often would I have the chance to see a pretty girl bathing? I could recall no specific prohibition from the church or the Scriptures, though I knew it was wrong. But maybe it wasn’t terribly sinful.
   Because it involved mischief, I thought of Ricky. What would he do in a situation like this?
   I climbed down from the elm and sneaked through weeds and brush until I was above the gravel bar, then I slowly crawled through the bushes.
   Her dress and underclothes were hung over a branch. Tally was deep in the water, her head covered with white lather as she gently washed her hair. I was sweating, but not breathing. Lying on my stomach in the grass, peering through two big limbs, I was invisible to her. The trees were moving more than I was.
   She was humming, just a pretty girl bathing in a creek, enjoying the cool water. She wasn’t looking around in fear; she trusted me.
   She dipped her head under the water, rinsing out the shampoo, sending the lather away in the slight current. Then she stood and reached for a bar of soap. Her back was to me, and I saw her rear end, all of it. She was wearing nothing, which was exactly what I wore during my weekly baths, and it was what I expected. But confirming it sent a shudder throughout my body. Instinctively, I raised my head, I guess for a closer look, then ducked again when I regained my senses.
   If she caught me, she’d tell her father, who’d tell my father, who’d beat me until I couldn’t walk. My mother would scold me for a week. Gran wouldn’t speak to me, she’d be so hurt. Pappy would give me a tongue-lashing, but only for the benefit of the others. I’d be ruined.
   In water up to her waist, she bathed her arms and chest, which I could see from the side. I had never seen a woman’s breasts before, and I doubted if any seven-year-old boy in Craighead County had. Maybe some kid had stumbled upon his mother, but I was certain no boy my age had ever had this view.
   For some reason, I thought of Ricky again, and a wicked idea came from nowhere. Having seen most of her privates, I now wanted to see everything. If I yelled “Snake!” at the top of my voice, she would scream in horror. She would forget the soap and the washcloth and the nudity and all that, and she would scamper for dry land. She would go for her clothes, but for a few glorious seconds I would see it all.
   I swallowed hard, tried to clear my throat, but realized how dry my mouth was. With my heart racing away, I hesitated, and in doing so learned a valuable lesson in patience.
   To wash her legs, Tally stepped closer to the bank. She rose from the creek until the water covered nothing but her feet. Slowly, with the soap and cloth she bent and stretched and caressed her legs and buttocks and stomach. My heart pounded at the ground.
   She rinsed by splashing water over her body. And when she was finished, and still standing in ankle-deep water, wonderfully naked, Tally turned and stared directly at the spot where I happened to be hiding.
   I dropped my head and burrowed even deeper into the weeds. I waited for her to yell something, but she did not. This sin was unforgivable, I was now certain.
   I inched backward, very slowly, not making a sound, until I was near the edge of the cotton. Then I crawled furiously along the tree line and resumed my position near the trail, as if nothing had happened. I tried to look bored when I heard her coming.
   Her hair was wet; she’d changed dresses. “Thanks, Luke,” she said.
   “Uh, sure,” I managed to say.
   “I feel so much better.”
   So do I, I thought.
   We walked slowly back toward the house. Nothing was said at first, but when we were halfway home she asked, “You saw me, didn’t you, Luke?” Her voice was light and playful, and I didn’t want to lie.
   “Yes,” I said.
   “That’s okay. I’m not mad.”
   “You’re not?”
   “No. I guess it’s only natural, you know, for boys to look at girls.”
   It certainly seemed natural. I could think of nothing to say.
   She continued, “If you’ll go with me to the creek the next time, and be my lookout, then you can do it again.”
   “Do what again?”
   “Watch me.”
   “Okay,” I said, a little too quickly.
   “But you can’t tell anybody.”
   “I won’t.”
   Over supper, I picked at my food and tried to behave as if nothing had happened. It was difficult eating, though, with my stomach still turning flips. I could see Tally just as clearly as if we were still at the creek.
   I’d done a terrible thing. And I couldn’t wait to do it again.
   “What’re you thinkin’ ‘bout, Luke?” Gran asked.
   “Nothin’ much,” I said, jolted back into reality.
   “Come on,” Pappy said. “Something’s on your mind.”
   Inspiration hit fast. “That switchblade,” I said.
   All four adults shook their heads in disapproval.
   “Think pleasant thoughts,” Gran said.
   Don’t worry, I thought to myself. Don’t worry.

Chapter 13

   For the second Sunday in a row, death dominated our worship. Mrs. Letha Haley Dockery was a large, loud woman whose husband had left her many years earlier and fled to California. Not surprisingly, there were a few rumors of what he did once he arrived there, and the favorite, which I’d heard a few times, was that he had taken up with a younger woman of another race-possibly Chinese, though, like a lot of gossip around Black Oak, it couldn’t be confirmed. Who’d ever been to California?
   Mrs. Dockery had raised two sons, neither of whom had received much distinction but who had the good sense to leave the cotton patch. One was in Memphis; the other out West, wherever, exactly, that was.
   She had other family scattered around northeastern Arkansas, and in particular there was a distant cousin who lived in Paragould, twenty miles away. Very distant, according to Pappy, who didn’t like Mrs. Dockery at all. This cousin in Paragould had a son who was also fighting in Korea.
   When Ricky was mentioned in prayer in our church, an uncomfortable event that happened all the time, Mrs. Dockery was quick to jump forward and remind the congregation that she, too, had family in the war. She’d corner Gran and would whisper gravely about the burden of waiting for news from the front. Pappy talked to no one about the war, and he had rebuked Mrs. Dockery after one of her early attempts to commiserate with him. As a family, we simply tried to ignore what was happening in Korea, at least in public.
   Months earlier, during one of her frequent plays for sympathy, someone had asked Mrs. Dockery if she had a photo of her nephew.
   As a church, we’d been praying for him so much, somebody wanted to see him. She’d been humiliated when she couldn’t produce one.
   When he was first shipped off, his name had been Jimmy Nance, and he was a nephew of her fourth cousin-her “very close cousin.” As the war progressed, he became Timmy Nance, and he also became not just a nephew, but a genuine cousin himself, something of the second or third degree. We couldn’t keep it straight. Though she preferred the name Timmy, occasionally Jimmy would sneak back into the conversation.
   Whatever his real name, he’d been killed. We heard the news in church that Sunday before we could get out of the truck.
   They had her in the fellowship hall, surrounded by ladies from her Sunday school class, all of them bawling and carrying on. I watched from a distance while Gran and my mother waited in line to comfort her, and I truly felt sorry for Mrs. Dockery. However thick or thin the kinship, the woman was in great agony.
   Details were discussed in whispers: He’d been driving a jeep for his commander when they hit a land mine. The body wouldn’t be home for two months, or maybe never. He was twenty years old and had a young wife at home, up in Kennett, Missouri.
   While all this conversation was going on, the Reverend Akers entered the room and sat beside Mrs. Dockery. He held her hand, and they prayed long and hard and silently. The entire church was there, watching her, waiting to offer sympathies.
   After a few minutes, I saw Pappy ease out of the door.
   So this is what it will look like, I thought, if our worst fears come true: From the other side of the world, they will send the news that he’s dead. Then friends will gather around us, and everybody will cry.
   My throat suddenly ached and my eyes were beginning to moisten. I said to myself, “This cannot happen to us. Ricky doesn’t drive a jeep over there, and if he did, he’d have better sense than to run over a \ land mine. Surely, he’s coming home.”
   I wasn’t about to get caught crying, so I sneaked out of the building just in time to see Pappy get in his truck, where I joined him. We sat and stared through the windshield for a long time; then without a word, he started the engine, and we left.
   We drove past the gin. Though it was silent on Sunday mornings, every farmer secretly wanted it roaring at full throttle. It operated for only three months out of the year.
   We left town with no particular destination in mind, at least I couldn’t determine one. We stayed on the back roads, graveled and dusty with the rows of cotton just a few feet off the shoulders.
   His first words were, “That’s where the Siscos live.” He nodded to his left, unwilling to take a hand off the wheel. In the distance, just barely visible over the acres of cotton stalks, was a typical sharecropper’s house. The rusted tin roof sagged, the porch sloped, the yard was dirt, and the cotton grew almost to the clothesline. I didn’t see anyone moving around, and that was a relief. Knowing Pappy, he might get the sudden urge to pull up in the front yard and start a brawl.
   We kept going slowly through the endlessly flat cotton fields. I was skipping Sunday school, an almost unbelievable treat. My mother wouldn’t like it, but she wouldn’t argue with Pappy. It was my mother who had told me that he and Gran reached out for me when they were most worried about Ricky.
   He spotted something, and we slowed almost to a stop. “That’s the Embry place,” he said, nodding again. “You see them Mexicans?” I stretched and strained and finally saw them, four or five straw hats deep in the sea of white, bending low as if they had heard us and were hiding.
   “They’re pickin’ on Sunday?” I said.
   “Yep.”
   We gained speed, and finally, they were out of sight. “What’re you gonna do?” I asked, as if the law were being broken.
   “Nothin’. That’s Embry’s business.”
   Mr. Embry was a member of our church. I couldn’t imagine him allowing his fields to be worked on the Sabbath. “Reckon he knows about it?” I asked.
   “Maybe he doesn’t. I guess it’d be easy for the Mexicans to sneak out there after he left for church.” Pappy said this without much conviction.
   “But they can’t weigh their own cotton,” I said, and Pappy actually smiled.
   “No, I guess not,” he said. So it was determined that Mr. Embry allowed his Mexicans to pick on Sunday. There were rumors of this every fall, but I couldn’t imagine a fine deacon like Mr. Embry taking part in such a low sin. I was shocked; Pappy was not.
   Those poor Mexicans. Haul ‘em like cattle, work ‘em like dogs, and their one day of rest was taken away while the owner hid in church.
   “Let’s keep quiet about this,” Pappy said, smug that he’d confirmed a rumor.
   More secrets.

   We heard the congregation singing as we walked toward the church. I’d never been on the outside when I wasn’t supposed to be. “Ten minutes late,” Pappy mumbled to himself as he opened the door. They were standing and singing, and we were able to slide into our seats without much commotion. I glanced at my parents, but they were ignoring me. When the song was over, we sat down, and I found myself sitting snugly between my grandparents. Ricky might be in danger, but I would certainly be protected.
   The Reverend Akers knew better than to touch on the subjects of war and death. He began by delivering the solemn news about Timmy Nance, news everyone had already heard. Mrs. Dockery had been taken home to recover. Meals were being planned by her Sunday school class. It was time, he said, for the church to close ranks and comfort one of its own.
   It would be Mrs. Dockery’s finest hour, and we all knew it.
   If he dwelt on war, he’d have to deal with Pappy when the service was over, so he stuck to his prepared message. We Baptists took great pride in sending missionaries all over the world, and the entire denomination was in the middle of a great campaign to raise money for their support. That’s what Brother Akers talked about-giving more money so we could send more of our people to places like India, Korea, Africa, and China. Jesus taught that we should love all people, regardless of their differences. And it was up to us as Baptists to convert the rest of the world.
   I decided I wouldn’t give an extra dime.
   I’d been taught to tithe one tenth of my earnings, and I did so grudgingly. It was there in the Scriptures, though, and hard to argue with. But Brother Akers was asking for something above and beyond, something optional, and he was flat out of luck as far as I was concerned. None of my money was going to Korea. I’m sure the rest of the Chandlers felt the same way. Probably the entire church.
   He was subdued that morning. He was preaching on love and charity, not sin and death, and I don’t think his heart was in it. With things quieter than usual, I began to nod off.
   After the service, we were in no mood for small talk. The adults went straight to the truck, and we left in a hurry. On the edge of town, my father asked, “Where did you and Pappy go?”
   “Just drivin’ around,” I said.
   “Whereto?”
   I pointed to the east and said, “Over there. Nowhere, really. I think he just wanted to get away from church.” He nodded as if he wished he’d gone with us.

   As we were finishing Sunday dinner, there was a slight knock at the back door. My father was the closest to it, so he stepped onto the back porch and found Miguel and Cowboy.
   “Mother, you’re needed,” he said, and Gran hurried out of the kitchen. The rest of us followed.
   Cowboy’s shirt was off; the left side of his chest was swollen and looked awful. He could barely raise his left arm, and when Gran made him do it, he grimaced. I felt sorry for him. There was a small flesh wound where the baseball had struck. “I can count the seams,” Gran said.
   My mother brought a pan of water and a cloth. After a few minutes, Pappy and my father grew bored and left. I’m sure they were worrying about how an injured Mexican might affect production.
   Gran was happiest when she was playing doctor, and Cowboy got the full treatment. After she dressed the wound, she made him lie on the back porch, his head on a pillow from our sofa.
   “He’s got to be still,” she said to Miguel.
   “How much pain?” she asked.
   “Not much,” Cowboy said, shaking his head. His English surprised us.
   “I wonder if I should give him a painkiller,” she mused in the direction of my mother.
   Gran’s painkillers were worse than any broken bone, and I gave Cowboy a horrified look. He read me perfectly and said, “No, no medicine.” She put ice from the kitchen into a small burlap bag and gently placed it on his swollen ribs. “Hold it there,” she said, putting his left arm over the bag. When the ice touched him, his entire body went rigid, but he relaxed as the numbness set in. Within seconds, water was running down his skin and dripping onto the porch. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply.
   “Thank you,” Miguel said.
   “Gracias,” I said, and Miguel smiled at me.
   We left them there, and gathered on the front porch for a glass of iced tea.
   “His ribs are broken,” Gran said to Pappy, who was on the porch swing, digesting his dinner. He really didn’t want to say anything, but after a few seconds of silence he grunted and said, “That’s too bad.”
   “He needs to see a doctor.”
   “What’s a doctor gonna do?”
   “Maybe there’s internal bleeding.”
   “Maybe there ain’t.”
   “It could be dangerous.”
   “If he was bleedin’ inside, he’d be dead by now, wouldn’t he?”
   “Sure he would,” my father added.
   Two things were happening here. First and foremost, the men were terrified of having to pay a doctor. Second, and almost as significant, both had fought in the trenches. They had seen stray body parts, mangled corpses, men with limbs missing, and they had no patience with the small stuff. Routine cuts and breaks were hazards of life. Tough it out.
   Gran knew she would not prevail. “If he dies, it’ll be our fault.”
   “He ain’t gonna die, Ruth,” Pappy said. “And even if he does, it won’t be our fault. Hank’s the one who broke his ribs.”
   My mother left and went inside. She was not feeling well again, and I was beginning to worry about her. Talk shifted to the cotton, and I left the porch.
   I crept around back, where Miguel was sitting not far from Cowboy. Both appeared to be sleeping. I sneaked into the house and went to check on my mother. She was lying on her bed, her eyes open. “Are you okay, Mom?” I asked.
   “Yes, of course, Luke. Don’t worry about me.”
   She would’ve said that no matter how bad she felt. I leaned on the edge of her bed for a few moments, and when I was ready to leave, I said, “You’re sure you’re okay?”
   She patted my arm and said, “I’m fine, Luke.”
   I went to Ricky’s room to get my glove and baseball. Miguel was gone when I walked quietly out of the kitchen. Cowboy was sitting on the edge of the porch, his feet hanging off the boards, his left arm pressing the ice to his wounds. He still scared me, but in his present condition I doubted if he would do any harm.
   I swallowed hard and held out my baseball, the same one that had broken his ribs. “How do you throw that curve?” I asked him. His unkind face relaxed, then he almost smiled. “Here,” he said, and pointed to the grass next to the porch. I hopped down, and stood next to his knees.
   Cowboy gripped the baseball with his first two fingers directly on the seams. “Like this,” he said. It was the same way Pappy had taught me.
   “And then you snap,” he said, twisting his wrist so that his fingers were under the ball when it was released. It was nothing new. I took the ball and did exactly as he said.
   He watched me without a word. That hint of a smile was gone, and I got the impression he was in a lot of pain.
   “Thanks,” I said. He barely nodded.
   Then my eyes caught the tip of his switchblade protruding from a hole in the right front pocket of his work pants. I couldn’t help but stare at it. I looked at him, and then we both looked down at the weapon. Slowly, he removed it. The handle was dark green and smooth, with carvings on it. He held it up for me to see, then he pressed the switch, and the blade sprang forth. It snapped, and I jerked back.
   “Where’d you get that?” I asked. A dumb question, to which he offered no answer.
   “Do it again,” I said.
   In a flash, he pressed the blade against his leg, folding it back into the handle, then waved it near my face as he snapped the blade out again.
   “Can I do it?” I asked.
   No, he shook his head firmly.
   “You ever stuck anybody with it?”
   He drew it closer to himself and gave me a nasty look. “Many men,” he said.
   I’d seen enough. I backed away, then trotted past the silo, where I could be alone. I threw pop flies to myself for an hour, hoping desperately that Tally would happen by on her way to the creek again.

Chapter 14

   We gathered in silence at the tractor early Monday morning. I wanted so badly to sneak back into the house and into Ricky’s bed and sleep for days. No cotton, no Hank Spruill, nothing to make life unpleasant. “We can rest in the winter,” Gran was fond of saying, and it was true. Once the cotton was picked and the fields plowed under, our little farm hibernated through the cold months.
   But in the middle of September, cold weather was a distant dream. Pappy and Mr. Spruill and Miguel huddled near the tractor and spoke earnestly while the rest of us tried to listen. The Mexicans were waiting in a group not far away. A plan was devised whereby they would start with the cotton near the barn, so they could simply walk to the fields. We Arkansans would work a little farther away, and the cotton trailer would act as a dividing line between the two groups. Distance was needed between Hank and Cowboy, otherwise there would be another killing.
   “I don’t want any more trouble,” I heard Pappy say. Everyone knew the switchblade would never leave Cowboy’s pocket, and we doubted that Hank, dumb as he was, would be stupid enough to attack him again. Over breakfast that morning Pappy had ventured the guess that Cowboy wasn’t the only armed Mexican. One reckless move by Hank, and there might be switchblades flying everywhere. This had been shared with Mr. Spruill, who had assured Pappy that there would be no more trouble. But by then no one believed that Mr. Spruill, or anybody else, could control Hank.
   It had rained late last night, but there was no trace of it in the fields; the cotton was dry, the soil almost dusty. But the rain had been seen by Pappy and my father as an ominous warning of the inevitable flooding, and there was an anxiousness about the two that was contagious.
   Our crops were nearly perfect, and we had just a few more weeks to gather them before the skies opened. When the tractor stopped near the cotton trailer, we quickly grabbed our sacks and disappeared among the stalks. There was no laughing or singing from the Spruills, not a sound from the Mexicans in the distance. And no napping on my part. I picked as fast as I could.
   The sun rose quickly and cooked the dew from the bolls of cotton. The thick air clung to my skin and soaked my overalls, and sweat dripped from my chin. One slight advantage in being so small was that most of the stalks were taller than me; I was partially shaded.

   Two days of heavy picking, and the cotton trailer was full. Pappy took it to town; always Pappy, never my father. Like my mother and (he garden, it was one of those chores that had been designated long before I came along. I was expected to ride with him, something I always enjoyed because it meant a trip to town, if only to the gin.
   After a quick dinner, we took the truck to the field and hitched up the cotton trailer. Then we climbed along its edges and secured the tarp so that no bolls would blow away. It seemed a crime to waste a single ounce of something we’d worked so hard to gather.
   As we drove back to the house, I saw the Mexicans behind the barn, grouped tightly, slowly eating their tortillas. My father was at the tool shed, patching an inner tube for a front tire on the John Deere. The women were washing dishes. Pappy abruptly stopped the truck. “Stay here,” he said to me. “I’ll be right back.” He’d forgotten something.
   When he returned from the house, he was carrying his twelve-gauge shotgun, which he slid under the seat without a word.
   “We goin’ huntin’?” I asked, knowing full well that I would not get an answer.
   The Sisco affair had not been discussed over dinner or on the front porch. I think the adults had agreed to leave the subject alone, at least in my presence. But the shotgun suggested an abundance of possibilities.
   I immediately thought of a gunfight, Gene Autry style, at the gin. The good guys, the farmers, of course, on one side, blasting away while ducking behind and between their cotton trailers; the bad guys, the Siscos and their friends, on the other side returning fire. Freshly picked cotton flying through the air as the trailers took one hit after another. Windows crashing. Trucks exploding. By the time we crossed the river, there were casualties all over the gin lot.
   “You gonna shoot somebody?” I asked, in an effort to force Pappy to say something.
   “Tend to your own business,” he said gruffly as he shifted gears.
   Perhaps he had a score to settle with some offending soul. This brought to mind one of the favorite Chandler stories. When Pappy was much younger, he, like all farmers, worked the fields with a team of mules. This was long before tractors, and all farming was done by man and animal. A ne’er-do-well neighbor named Woolbright saw Pappy in the fields one day, and evidently Pappy was having a bad day with the mules. According to Woolbright, Pappy was beating the poor beasts about their heads with a large stick. As Woolbright later told the story at the Tea Shoppe, he’d said, “If I’d had a wet burlap sack, I’d’ve taught Eli Chandler a thing or two.” Word filtered back, and Pappy heard what Woolbright said. A few days later, after a long hot day in the fields, Pappy took a burlap sack, put it in a bucket of water, and skipping dinner, walked three miles to Woolbright’s house. Or five miles or ten miles, depending on who happened to be telling the story.
   Once there, he called on Woolbright to come out and settle things. Woolbright was just finishing dinner, and he may or may not have had a houseful of kids. Anyway, Woolbright walked to the screen door, looked out into his front yard, and decided things were safer inside.
   Pappy yelled at him repeatedly to come on out. “Here’s your burlap sack, Woolbright!” he yelled. “Now come on out and finish the job.”
   Woolbright retreated deeper into his house, and when it was evident he wasn’t coming out, Pappy threw the wet burlap sack through the screen door. Then he walked three or five or ten miles back home and went to bed, without dinner.
   I’d heard the story enough to believe it was true. Even my mother believed it. Eli Chandler had been a hot-tempered brawler in his younger days, and at the age of sixty he still had a short fuse.
   But he wouldn’t kill anybody, unless it was in self-defense. And he preferred to use his fists or less menacing weapons like burlap sacks. The gun was traveling with us just in case. The Siscos were crazy people.
   The gin was roaring when we arrived. A long line of trailers waited ahead of us, and I knew we’d be there for hours. It was dark when Pappy turned off the engine and tapped his fingers on the wheel. The Cardinals were playing, and I was anxious to get home.
   Before getting out of the truck, Pappy surveyed the trailers and the trucks and tractors, and he watched the farmhands and gin workers go about their business. He was looking for trouble, and seeing none, he finally said, “I’ll go check in. You wait here.”
   I watched him shuffle across the gravel and stop at a group of men outside the office. He stayed there awhile, talking and listening. Another group was congregated near a trailer in the line ahead of us, young men smoking and talking and waiting. Though the gin was the center of activity, things moved slowly.
   I caught a glimpse of a figure as it appeared from somewhere behind our truck. “Howdy, Luke,” the voice said, giving me a start. When I jerked around, I saw the friendly face of Jackie Moon, an older boy from north of town.
   “Hi, Jackie,” I said, very relieved. For a split second I thought one of the Siscos had started the ambush. He leaned on the front fender with his back to the gin, and produced a cigarette, one that he’d already rolled. “Y’all heard from Ricky?” he asked.
   I watched the cigarette. “Not lately,” I said. “We got a letter a couple of weeks ago.”
   “How’s he doin’?”
   “Fine, I guess.”
   He scraped a match on the side of our truck and lit the cigarette. He was tall and skinny and had been a basketball star at Monette High School for as long as I could remember. He and Ricky had played together, until Ricky got caught smoking behind the school. The coach, a veteran who’d lost a leg in the war, bounced Ricky from the team. Pappy had stomped around the Chandler farm for a week threatening to kill his younger son. Ricky told me privately that he was tired of basketball anyway. He wanted to play football, but Monette couldn’t have a team because of cotton picking.
   “I might be goin’ over there,” Jackie said.
   “To Korea?”
   “Yep.”
   I wanted to ask why he thought he was needed in Korea. As much as I hated picking cotton, I would much rather do it than get shot at. “What about basketball?” I asked. There was a rumor that Arkansas State was recruiting Jackie.
   “I’m quittin’ school,” he said, and blew a cloud into the air.
   “Why?”
   “I’m tired of it. Been goin’ for twelve years already, on and off.
   That’s more ‘an anybody else in my family. I figure I’ve learned enough.”
   Kids quit school all the time in our county. Ricky tried several times, and Pappy had become indifferent. Gran, on the other hand, laid down the law, and he finally graduated.
   “Lot of boys gettin’ shot over there,” he said, staring into the distance.
   That was not something I wanted to hear, so I said nothing. He finished his cigarette and thrust his hands deep into his pockets. “They’re tellin’ that you saw that Sisco fight,” he said, again without looking at me.
   I figured that somehow the fight would get discussed during this trip to town. I remembered my father’s stern warning not to discuss the incident with anyone.
   But I could trust Jackie. He and Ricky had grown up together.
   “Lots of folks saw it,” I said.
   “Yeah, but ain’t nobody talkin’. Hillbillies ain’t sayin’ a word ‘cause it’s one of their own. Locals ain’t talkin’ ‘cause Eli’s told everybody to shut up. That’s what they’re tellin’, anyway.”
   I believed him. I didn’t doubt for a second that Eli Chandler had used the Baptist brethren to circle the wagons, at least until the cotton was in.
   “What about the Siscos?” I asked.
   “Ain’t nobody seen ‘em. They’re layin’ low. Had the funeral last Friday. Siscos dug the grave themselves; buried him out behind the Bethel church. Stick’s watchin’ ‘em real close.”
   There was another long gap in the conversation as the gin howled behind us. He rolled another cigarette, lit it, and finally said, “I saw you there, at the fight.”
   I felt like I’d been caught committing a crime. All I could think to say was, “So.”
   “I saw you with the little Pinter boy. And when that hillbilly picked up that piece of wood, I looked at the two of you and thought to myself, Those boys don’t need to see this. ‘ And I was right.”
   “I wish I hadn’t seen it.”
   “I wish I hadn’t, either,” he said, and discharged a neat circle of smoke.
   I looked toward the gin to make sure Pappy wasn’t close. He was still inside somewhere, in the small office where the gin owner kept the paperwork. Other trailers had arrived and were parked behind us. “Have you talked to Stick?” I asked.
   “Nope. Don’t plan to. You?”
   “Yeah, he came out to the house.”
   “Did he talk to the hillbilly?”
   “Yeah.”
   “So Stick knows his name?”
   “I guess.”
   “Why didn’t he arrest him?”
   “I’m not sure. I told him it was three against one.”
   He grunted and spat into the weeds. “It was three against one all right, but nobody had to get killed. I don’t like the Siscos, nobody does, but he didn’t have to beat ‘em like that.”
   I didn’t say anything. He drew on the cigarette and began talking, the smoke pouring out of his mouth and nose.
   “His face was blood-red and his eyes were glowin’, and all ‘a sudden he stopped and just looked down at ‘em, as if a ghost grabbed him and made him quit. Then he backed away and straightened up, and looked at ‘em again as if somebody else had done it. Then he walked away, back onto Main Street, and all the other Siscos and their people ran up and got the boys. They borrowed Roe Duncan’s pickup and hauled ‘em home. Jerry never woke up. Roe his self drove Jerry to the hospital in the middle of the night, but Roe said he was already dead. Fractured skull. Lucky the other two didn’t die. He beat ‘em just as bad as he beat Jerry. Ain’t never seen nothin’ like it.”
   “Me neither.”
   “I’d skip the fights for a while if I was you. You’re too young.”
   “Don’t worry.” I looked at the gin and saw Pappy. “Here comes Pappy,” I said.
   He dropped the cigarette and stepped on it. “Don’t tell anybody what I said, all right?”
   “Sure.”
   “I don’t want to get involved with that hillbilly.”
   “I won’t say a word.”
   “Tell Ricky I said hello. Tell him to hold ‘em off till I get there.”
   “I will, Jackie.” He disappeared as quietly as he had come.
   More secrets to keep.
   Pappy unhitched the trailer and got behind the wheel. “We ain’t waitin’ three hours,” he mumbled, and started the engine. He drove away from the gin and left town. At some point late in the night, a gin worker would hitch a small tractor to our trailer and pull it forward. The cotton would be sucked into the gin, and an hour later two perfect bales would emerge. They would be weighed, and then samples would be cut from each and set aside for the cotton buyer to evaluate. After breakfast, Pappy would return to the gin to get our trailer.
   He would examine the bales and the samples, and he would find something else to worry about.

   The next day a letter arrived from Ricky. Gran had it lying on the kitchen table when we came through the back door, our feet dragging and our backs aching. I’d picked seventy-eight pounds of cotton that day, an all-time record for a seven-year-old, though records were impossible to monitor because so much lying went on. Especially among kids. Both Pappy and my father were now picking five hundred pounds every day.
   Gran was humming and smiling, so we knew the letter had good news. She snatched it up and read it aloud to us. By then she had it memorized.

   Dear Mom and Dad and Jesse and Kathleen and Luke:
   I hope all is well at home. I never thought I’d miss the cotton picking, but I sure wish I was home right now. I miss everythingthe farm, the fried chicken, the Cardinals. Can you believe the Dodgers will take the pennant? Makes me sick.
   Anyway, I’m doing fine over here. Things are quiet. We’re not on the front anymore. My unit is about five miles back, and we’re catching up on some sleep. We’re warm and rested and eating good, and right now nobody is shooting at us and we’re not shooting at anybody.
   I really think I’ll be home soon. It seems like things are slowing down a little. We hear some rumors about peace talks and such, so we’ve got our fingers crossed.
   I got your last batch of letters, and they mean a lot to me. So keep writing. Luke, your letter was a tad short, so write me a longer one.
   Gotta run. Love to all, Ricky—
   We passed it around and read it again and again, then Gran placed it in a cigar box next to the radio. All of Ricky’s letters were there, and it was not uncommon to walk through the kitchen at night and catch Pappy or Gran rereading them.
   The new letter made us forget about our stiff muscles and burned skin, and we all ate in a hurry so we could sit around the table and write to Ricky.
   Using my Big Chief writing tablet and a pencil, I told him all about Jerry Sisco and Hank Spruill, and I spared no detail. Blood, splintered wood, Stick Powers, everything. I didn’t know how to spell a lot (if the words, so I simply guessed. If anyone would forgive me for misspelling, it was Ricky. Since I didn’t want them to know that I was spreading gossip all the way to Korea, I covered my tablet as best I could.
   Five letters were written at the same time, and I’m sure five versions of the same events were described to Ricky. The adults told funny stories as we wrote. It was a happy moment in the midst of the harvest. Pappy turned on the radio, and we got the Cardinals as our letters grew longer and longer.
   Sitting around the kitchen table, laughing and writing and listening to the game, there was not a single doubt that Ricky would soon be home.
   He said he would be.

Chapter 15

   Thursday afternoon, my mother found me in the fields and said that I was needed in the garden. I happily unstrapped my picking sack and left the other laborers lost in the cotton. We walked to the house, both of us relieved that the workday was over.
   “We need to visit the Latchers,” she said along the way. “I worry about them so. They might be hungry, you know.”
   The Latchers had a garden, though not much of one. I doubted if anyone was going hungry. They certainly didn’t have a crumb to spare, but starvation was unheard of in Craighead County. Even the poorest of the sharecroppers managed to grow tomatoes and cucumbers. Every farm family had a few chickens laying eggs.
   But my mother was determined to see Libby so that the rumors could be confirmed or denied.
   As we entered our garden, I realized what my mother was doing. If we hurried, and made it to the Latchers’ before quitting time, then the parents and all those kids would be in the fields. Libby, if she was in fact pregnant, would be hanging around the house, most likely alone. She would have no choice but to come out and accept our vegetables. We could blindside her, nail her with Christian goodness while her protectors were away. It was a brilliant plan.
   Under the strict supervision of my mother, I began picking tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, butter beans, corn-almost everything in the garden. “Get that small red tomato there, Luke, to your right,” she said. “No, no, those peas can wait.” And, “No, that cucumber isn’t quite ready.”
   Though she often gathered the produce herself, she preferred to oversee matters. A balance to the garden could be maintained if she could keep her distance, survey the entire plot, and with the eye of an artist, direct my efforts, or my father’s, in removing the food from the vines.
   I hated the garden, but at that moment I hated the fields even more. Anything was better than picking cotton.
   As I reached for an ear of corn, I saw something between the stalks that stopped me cold. Beyond the garden was a small, shaded strip of grass, too narrow to play catch on, and thus good for nothing. Next to it was the east wall of our house, the side away from any traffic. On the west side was the kitchen door, the parking place for our truck, the footpaths that led to the barn, the outbuildings, and the fields. Everything happened on the west side; nothing on the cast.
   At the corner, facing the garden and out of view of everyone, someone had painted a portion of the bottom board. Painted it white. The rest of the house was the same pale brown it had always been, the same drab color of old, sturdy oak planks.
   “What is it, Luke?” my mother asked. She was never in a hurry in the garden, because it was her sanctuary, but today she was planning an ambush, and time was crucial.
   “I don’t know,” I said, still frozen.
   She stepped beside me and peered through the cornstalks that bordered and secluded her garden, and when her eyes settled upon the painted board, she, too, stood still.
   The paint was thick at the corner, but thinned as the board ran toward the rear of the house. It was obviously a work in progress. Someone was painting our house.
   “It’s Trot,” she said softly, a smile forming at the corners of her mouth.
   I hadn’t thought of him, hadn’t yet had time to consider a culprit, but it immediately became clear that he was the painter. Who else could it be? Who else loitered around the front yard all day with nothing to do while the rest of us slaved in the fields? Who else would work at such a pitiful pace? Who else would be dense enough to paint another man’s house without permission?
   And it had been Trot who’d yelled at Hank to stop torturing me about our little unpainted, sodbuster house. Trot had come to my rescue.
   But where would Trot get the money to buy paint? And why would he do it in the first place? Oh, there were dozens of questions.
   She took a step back, then left the garden. I followed her to the corner of the house, where we examined the paint. We could smell it there, and it appeared to be sticky. She surveyed the front yard. Trot was nowhere to be seen.
   “What’re we gonna do?” I asked.
   “Nothing, at least not now.”
   “You gonna tell anybody?”
   “I’ll talk to your father about it. In the meantime, let’s keep it a secret.”
   “You told me secrets were bad for boys.”
   “They’re bad when you keep them from your parents.”
   We filled two straw baskets with vegetables and loaded them into the truck. My mother drove about once a month. She could certainly handle Pappy’s truck, but she could not relax behind the wheel. She gripped it fiercely, pumped the clutch and brakes, then turned the key. We jerked and lurched in reverse, and even laughed as the old truck slowly got turned around. As we left, I saw Trot lying under the Spruill truck, watching us from behind a rear tire.
   The frolicking stopped minutes later when we got to the river. “Hang on, Luke,” she said as she shifted into low and leaned over the wheel, her eyes wild with fear. Hang on to what? It was a one-lane bridge with no guardrails. If she drove off, then we’d both drown.
   “You can do it, Mom,” I said without much conviction.
   “Of course I can,” she said. I’d crossed the bridge with her before, and it was always an adventure. We crept over it, both afraid to look, down. We didn’t breathe until we hit dirt on the other side.
   “Good job, Mom,” I said.
   “Nothin’ to it,” she said, finally exhaling.
   At first I couldn’t see any Latchers in the fields, but as we approached the house, I saw a cluster of straw hats deep in the cotton, at the far end of their crop. I couldn’t tell if they heard us, but they did not stop picking. We parked close to the front porch as the dust settled around the truck. Before we could get out, Mrs. Latcher was coming down the front steps, wiping her hands nervously on a rag of some sort. She seemed to be talking to herself and appeared very worried.
   “Hello, Mrs. Chandler,” she said, looking off. I never knew why she didn’t use my mother’s first name. She was older and had at least six more children.
   “Hello, Darla. We’ve brought some vegetables.”
   The two women were facing each other. “I’m so glad you’re here,” Mrs. Latcher said, her voice very anxious.
   “What’s the matter?”
   Mrs. Latcher glanced at me, but only for a second. “I need you -help. It’s Libby. I think she’s about to have a baby.”
   “A baby?” my mother said, as if she hadn’t a clue.
   “Yes. I think she’s in labor.”
   “Then let’s call the doctor.”
   “Oh no. We can’t do that. No one can know about this. No one. It has to be kept quiet.”
   I had moved to the rear of the truck, and I was crouching down a bit so Mrs. Latcher couldn’t see me. That way, I figured she’d talk more. Something big was about to happen, and I didn’t want to miss any of it.
   “We’re so ashamed,” she said, her voice cracking. “She won’t tell us who the father is, and right now I don’t care. I just want the baby to get here.”
   “But you need a doctor.”
   “No ma’am. Nobody can know about this. If the doctor comes, then the whole county’ll know. You gotta keep it quiet, Mrs. Chandler. Can you promise me?”
   The poor woman was practically crying. She was desperate to keep a secret that had been the talk of Black Oak for months.
   “Let me see her,” my mother said without answering the question, and the women started for the house. “Luke, you stay here at the truck,” she said over her shoulder.
   As soon as they disappeared inside, I walked around the house and peeked into the first window I saw. It was a tiny living room with old, dirty mattresses on the floor. At the next window, I heard their voices. I froze and listened. The fields were behind me.
   “Libby, this is Mrs. Chandler,” Mrs. Latcher was saying. “She’s here to help you.”
   Libby whimpered something I couldn’t understand. She seemed to be in great pain. Then I heard her say, “I’m so sorry.”
   “It’s gonna be okay,” my mother said. “When did the labor start?”
   “About an hour ago,” Mrs. Latcher replied.
   “I’m so scared, Mama,” Libby said, much louder. Her voice was pure terror. Both ladies tried to calm her.
   Now that I was no longer a novice on the subject of female anatomy, I was quite anxious to have a look at a pregnant girl. But she sounded too close to the window, and if I got caught peeking in, my father would beat me for a week. An unauthorized view of a woman in labor was undoubtedly a sin of the greatest magnitude. I might even be stricken blind on the spot.
   But I couldn’t help myself. I crouched and slinked just under the windowsill. I removed my straw hat and was easing upward when a heavy clod of dirt landed less than two feet from my head. It crashed onto the side of the house with a boom, rattling the rickety boards and scaring the women to the point of making them yell. Bits of dirt splattered and hit the side of my face. I hit the ground and rolled away from the window. Then I scrambled to my feet and looked at the fields.
   Percy Latcher was not far away, standing between two rows of cotton, holding another clod of dirt with one hand, and pointing at me with another.
   “It’s your boy,” a voice said.
   I looked at the window and got a glimpse of Mrs. Latcher’s head. One more look at Percy, and I raced like a scalded dog back to the pickup. I jumped into the front seat, rolled up the window, and waited for my mother.
   Percy disappeared into the fields. It would be quitting time soon, and I wanted to leave before the rest of the Latchers drifted in.
   A couple of toddlers appeared on the porch, both of them naked, a boy and a girl, and I wondered what they thought of their big sister having yet another one. They just stared at me.
   My mother came out in a hurry, Mrs. Latcher on her heels, talking rapidly as they walked to the truck.
   “I’ll get Ruth,” my mother said, meaning Gran.
   “Please do, and hurry,” Mrs. Latcher said.
   “Ruth’s done this many times.”
   “Please get her. And please don’t tell anyone. Can we trust you, Mrs. Chandler?”
   My mother was opening the door, trying to get inside. “Of course you can.”
   “We’re so ashamed,” Mrs. Latcher said, wiping tears. “Please don’t tell anyone.”
   “It’s goin’ to be all right, Darla,” my mother said, turning the key. “I’ll be back in half an hour.”
   We lunged into reverse, and after a few bolts and stops, we were turned around and leaving the Latcher place. She was driving much faster, and this kept her attention, mostly.
   “Did you see Libby Latcher?” she finally asked.
   “No ma’am,” I said quickly and firmly. I knew the question was coming, and I was ready with the truth.
   “Are you sure?”
   “Yes ma’am.”
   “What were you doin’ beside the house?”
   “I was just walkin’ around when Percy threw a dirt clod at me. That’s what hit the house. It wasn’t my fault, it was Percy’s.” My words were fast and sure, and I know she wanted to believe me. More important matters were on her mind.
   We stopped at the bridge. She shifted into low, held her breath, and again said, “Hang on, Luke.”

   Gran was in the backyard, at the pump drying her face and hands and about to start supper. I had to run to keep up with my mother.
   “We have to go to the Latchers’,” she said. “That girl is in labor, and her mother wants you to deliver it.”
   “Oh, dear,” Gran said, her weary eyes suddenly alive with adventure. “So she’s really pregnant.”
   “Very much so. She’s been in labor for over an hour.”
   I was listening hard and thoroughly enjoying my involvement, when suddenly and for no apparent reason, both women turned and stared at me. “Luke, go to the house,” my mother said rather sternly, and began pointing, as if I didn’t know where the house was.
   “What’d I do?” I asked, wounded.
   “Just go,” she said, and I began to slink away. Arguing would get me nowhere. They resumed their conversation in hushed tones, and I was at the back porch when my mother called to me.
   “Luke, run to the fields and get your father! We need him!”
   “And hurry!” Gran said. She was thrilled with the prospect of doctoring on a real patient.
   I didn’t want to go back to the fields, and I would’ve argued but for the fact that Libby Latcher was having a baby at that very moment. I said, “Yes ma’am,” and sprinted past them.
   My father and Pappy were at the trailer, weighing cotton for the last time that day. It was almost five, and the Spruills had gathered with their heavy sacks. The Mexicans were nowhere to be seen.
   I managed to pull my father aside and explain the situation. He said something to Pappy, and we trotted back to the house. Gran was gathering supplies-rubbing alcohol, towels, painkillers, bottles of nasty remedies that would make Libby forget about child birthing. She was arranging her arsenal on the kitchen table, and I had never seen her move so fast.
   “Get cleaned up!” she said sharply to my father. “You’ll drive us there. It might take some time.” I could tell he was less than excited about getting dragged into this, but he wasn’t about to argue with his mother.
   “I’ll get cleaned up, too,” I said.
   “You’re not going anywhere,” my mother said to me. She was at the kitchen sink, slicing a tomato. Pappy and I would get leftovers for supper, in addition to the usual platter of cucumbers and tomatoes.
   They left in a rush, my father driving, my mother wedged between him and Gran, the three of them off to rescue Libby. I stood on the front porch and watched them speed away, a cloud of dust boiling behind the truck until it stopped at the river. I really wanted to go.
   Supper would be beans and cold biscuits. Pappy hated leftovers. He thought the women should’ve prepared supper before tending to the Latchers, but then, he was opposed to sending them food in the first place.
   “Don’t know why both women had to go,” he mumbled as he sat down. “They’re as curious as cats, aren’t they, Luke? They can’t wait to get over there, and see that pregnant girl.”
   “Yes sir,” I said.
   He blessed the food with a quick prayer, and we ate in silence.
   “Who are the Cardinals playin’?” he asked.
   “Reds.”
   “You wanna listen to it?”
   “Sure.” We listened to the game every night. What else was there to do?
   We cleared the table and placed our dirty dishes in the sink. Pappy would never consider washing them; that was work for the women. After dark, we sat on the porch in our usual positions and waited for Harry Caray and the Cardinals. The air was heavy and still dreadfully hot.
   “How long does it take to have a baby?” I asked.
   “Depends,” Pappy said from his swing. That was all he said, and after waiting long enough, I asked, “Depends on what?”
   “Oh, lots of things. Some babies pop right out, others take days.”
   “How long did I take?”
   He thought for a moment. “Don’t guess I remember. First babies usually take longer.”
   “Were you around?”
   “Nope. I was on a tractor.” The arrival of babies was not a subject Pappy cared to dwell on, and the conversation lagged.
   I saw Tally ease away from the front yard and disappear into the darkness. The Spruills were settling in; their cooking fire was just about out.
   The Reds scored four runs in the top of the first inning. Pappy got so upset he went to bed. I turned off the radio and sat on the porch, watching for Tally. Before long, I heard Pappy snoring.

Chapter 16

   I was determined to sit on the front steps and wait for my parents and Gran to return from the Latchers’. I could almost see the scene over there; the women in the back room with Libby, the men sitting outside with all those children, as far away from the birthing as possible. Their house was just across the river, not far at all, and I was missing it.
   Fatigue was hitting hard, and I almost fell asleep. Camp Spruill was still and dark, but I hadn’t seen Tally come back yet.
   I tiptoed through the house, heard Pappy in a deep sleep, and went to the back porch. I sat on the edge with my legs hanging off. The fields beyond the barn and the silo were a soft gray when the moon broke through the scattered clouds. Otherwise, they were hidden in black. I saw her walking alone on the main field road, just as moonlight swept the land for a second. She was in no hurry. Then everything was black again. There was not a sound for a long time, until she stepped on a twig near the house.
   “Tally,” I whispered as loudly as I could.
   After a long pause, she answered, “Is that you, Luke?”
   “Over here,” I said. “On the porch.”
   She was barefoot and made no sound when she walked. “What’re you doin’ out here, Luke?” she said, standing in front of me.
   “Where’ve you been?” I asked.
   “Just takin’ a walk.”
   “Why are you takin’ a walk?”
   “I don’t know. Sometimes I have to get away from my family.”
   That certainly made sense to me. She sat beside me on the porch, pulled her skirt up past her knees, and began swinging her legs.
   “Sometimes I want to just run away from them,” she said, very softly. “You ever want to run away, Luke?”
   “Not really. I’m only seven. But I’m not gonna live here for the rest of my life.”
   “Where you gonna live?”
   “St. Louis.”
   “Why St. Louis?”
   “That’s where the Cardinals play.”
   “And you’re gonna be a Cardinal?”
   “Sure am.”
   “You’re a smart boy, Luke. Only a fool would wanna pick cotton for the rest of his life. Me, I wanna go up North, too, up where it’s cool and there’s lots of snow.”
   “Where?”
   “I’m not sure. Montreal, maybe.”
   “Where’s that?”
   “Canada.”
   “Do they have baseball?”
   “I don’t think so.”
   “Then forget it.”
   “No, it’s beautiful. We studied it in school, in history. It was settled by the French, and that’s what everybody speaks.”
   “Do you speak French?”
   “No, but I can learn.”
   “It’s easy. I can already speak Spanish. Juan taught me last year.”
   “Really?”
   “Si”
   “Say something else.”
   “Buenos dias. Por favor. Adios. Gracias. Senor. Como esta?”
   “Wow.”
   “See, I told you it was easy. How far away is Montreal?”
   “I’m not sure. A long way, I think. That’s one reason I wanna go there.”
   A light suddenly came on in Pappy’s bedroom. It fell across the far end of the porch and startled us. “Be quiet,” I whispered.
   “Who is it?” she whispered back, ducking as if bullets were about to come our way.
   “That’s just Pappy getting some water. He’s up and down all night long.” Pappy went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. I watched him through the screen door. He drank two glasses of water, then stomped back to his bedroom and turned off the light. When things were dark and silent again, she said, “Why is he up all night?”
   “He worries a lot. Ricky’s fightin’ in Korea.”
   “Who’s Ricky?”
   “My uncle. He’s nineteen.”
   She pondered this for a moment, then said, “Is he cute?”
   “I don’t know. Don’t really think about that. He’s my best buddy, and I wish he’d come home.”
   We thought about Ricky for a moment as our feet dangled off the porch and the night passed.
   “Say, Luke, the pickup left before dinner. Where’d it go?”
   “Over to the Latchers’.”
   “Who are they?”
   “Some sharecroppers just across the river.”
   “Why’d they go over there?”
   “I can’t tell you.”
   “Why not?”
   “ ‘Cause it’s a secret.”
   “What kinda secret?”
   “Big one.”
   “Come on, Luke. We already have secrets, don’t we?”
   “I guess.”
   “I haven’t told anybody that you watched me at the creek, have I?”
   “I guess not.”
   “And if I did, you’d get in big trouble, wouldn’t you?”
   “I reckon I would.”
   “So there. I can keep a secret, you can keep a secret. Now what’s goin’ on over at the Latchers’?”
   “You promise you won’t tell.”
   “I promise.”
   The whole town already knew Libby was pregnant. What was the use in pretending it was a secret anyway? “Well, there’s this girl, Libby Latcher, and she’s havin’ a baby. Right now.”
   “How old is she?”
   “Fifteen.”
   “Gosh.”
   “And they’re tryin’ to keep it quiet. They wouldn’t call a real doctor ‘cause then everybody would know about it. So they asked Gran to come over and birth the baby.”
   “Why are they keepin’ it quiet?”
   “ ‘Cause she ain’t married.”
   “No kiddin’. Who’s the daddy?”
   “She ain’t sayin’.”
   “Nobody knows?”
   “Nobody but Libby.”
   “Do you know her?”
   “I’ve seen her before, but there’s a bunch of Latchers. I know her brother Percy. He says he’s twelve, but I’m not so sure. Hard to tell ‘cause they don’t go to school.”
   “Do you know how girls get pregnant?”
   “I reckon not.”
   “Then I’d better not tell you.”
   That was fine with me. Ricky had tried once to talk about girls, but it was sickening.
   Her feet swung faster as she digested this wonderful gossip. “The river ain’t far,” she said.
   “ ‘Bout a mile.”
   “How far on the other side do they live?”
   “Just a little ways down a dirt trail.”
   “You ever see a baby birthed, Luke?”
   “Nope. Seen cows and dogs but not a real baby.”
   “Me neither.”
   She dropped to her feet, grabbed my hand, and yanked me off the porch. Her strength was surprising. “Let’s go, Luke. Let’s go see what we can see.” She was dragging me before I could think of anything to say.
   “You’re crazy, Tally,” I protested, trying to stop her.
   “No, Luke,” she whispered. “It’s an adventure, just like down at the creek the other day. You liked that, didn’t you?”
   “Sure did.”
   “Then trust me.”
   “What if we get caught?”
   “How we gonna get caught? Everybody’s sound asleep around here. Your grandpa just woke up and didn’t think about lookin’ in on you. Come on, don’t be a chicken.”
   I suddenly realized I would’ve followed Tally anywhere.
   We crept behind the trees, through the ruts where the truck should’ve been, along the short drive, staying as far away from the Spruills as possible. We could hear snoring and the heavy breathing of weary people asleep at last. We made it to the road without a sound. Tally was quick and agile, and she cut through the night. We turned toward the river, and the moon broke free and lit our path. The one-lane road was barely wide enough for two trucks to squeeze past each other, and cotton grew close to its edges. With no moon we had to watch our steps, but with the light we could look up and see ahead. We were both barefoot. There was just enough gravel in the road to keep our steps short and quick, but the soles of our feet were like the leather of my baseball glove.
   I was scared but determined not to show it. She seemed to have no fear-no fear of getting caught, no fear of the darkness, no fear of sneaking up on a house where a baby was being born. At times Tally was aloof, almost moody and dark, and seemed as old as my mother. Then she could be a kid who laughed when she played baseball, liked being looked at when she bathed, took long walks in the dark, and most important, enjoyed the company of a seven-year-old.
   We stopped in the center of the bridge and carefully looked over its side at the water below. I told her about the channel catfish down there, about how big they were and the trash they fed on, and about the forty-four-pound one that Ricky had caught. She held my hand as we crossed to the other side, a gentle squeeze, one of affection and not safeguarding.
   The trail to the Latchers’ was much darker. We slowed considerably because we were trying to see the house while staying on the trail. Since they had no electricity, there were no lights, nothing but blackness in their bend of the river.
   She heard something and stopped cold. Voices, off in the distance. We stepped to the edge of their cotton and waited patiently for the moon. I pointed here and there and gave her my best guess as to the location of their house. The voices were of children, no doubt the Latcher brood.
   The moon finally cooperated, and we got a look at the landscape. The dark shadow of the house was the same distance as our barn was to our back porch, about 350 feet, same as home plate is from the outfield wall in Sportsman’s Park. Most great distances in my life were measured by that wall. Pappy’s truck was parked in the front.
   “We’d better go around this way,” she said calmly, as if she’d led many such raids. We sank into the cotton and followed one row and then another as we silently moved in a great semicircle through their crops. In most places, their cotton was almost as tall as I was. When we came to a gap where the stalks were thin, we stopped and studied the terrain. There was a faint light in the back room of the house, the room where they kept Libby. When we were directly east of it, we began cutting across rows of cotton, very quietly moving toward the house.
   The chances of someone seeing us were slim. We weren’t expected, of course, and they were thinking of other matters. And the crops were thick and dark at night; a kid could crawl on hands and knees through the stalks without ever being seen.
   My partner in crime moved deftly, as ably as any soldier I’d seen in the movies. She kept her eyes on the house and carefully brushed the stalks aside, always clearing a path for me. Not a word was spoken. We took our time, slowly advancing on the side of the house. The cotton grew close to the narrow dirt yard, and when we were ten rows away, we settled in a spot and surveyed the situation.
   We could hear the Latcher kids gathered near our pickup, which was parked as far away from the front porch as possible. My father and Mr. Latcher sat on the tailgate, talking softly. The children were quiet, and then they all talked at once. Everyone seemed to be waiting, and after a few minutes I got the impression they’d been waiting for a long time.
   Before us was the window, and from our hiding place we were closer to the action than the rest of the Latchers and my father. And we were wonderfully hidden from everything; a searchlight from the roof of the house could not have spotted us.
   There was a candle on a table of some sort just inside the window. The women moved around, and judging from the shadows that rose and fell, I figured there were several candles in the room. The light was dim, the shadows heavy.
   “Let’s move forward,” Tally whispered. By then we’d been there for five minutes, and though I was frightened, I didn’t think we would ever get caught.
   We advanced ten feet, and then nestled down in another safe place.
   “This is close enough,” I said.
   “Maybe.”
   The light from the room fell to the ground outside. The window had no screen, no curtains. As we waited, my heart slowed, and my breathing returned to normal. My eyes focused on the surroundings, and I began to hear the sounds of the night-the crickets’ chorus, the bullfrogs croaking down by the river, the murmuring of the deep voices of the men in the distance.
   My mother and Gran and Mrs. Latcher also talked in very low voices. We could hear, but we couldn’t understand.
   When all was quiet and still, Libby screamed in agony, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. Her pained voice echoed through the fields, and I was sure she had died. Silence engulfed the pickup. Even the crickets seemed to stop for a second.
   “What happened?” I asked.
   “A labor contraction,” Tally said, without taking her eyes off the window.
   “What’s that?”
   She shrugged. “Just part of it. It’ll get worse.”
   “That poor girl.”
   “She asked for it.”
   “What do you mean?” I asked.
   “Never mind,” she said.
   Things were quiet for a few minutes, then we heard Libby crying. Her mother and Gran tried to console her. “I’m so sorry,” Libby said over and over.
   “It’s gonna be all right,” her mother said.
   “Nobody’ll know about it,” Gran said. It was obviously a lie, but maybe it provided a little relief for Libby.
   “You’re gonna have a beautiful baby,” my mother said.
   A stray Latcher wandered over, one of the mid-sized ones, and sneaked its way close to the window, the same way I’d crept upon it just a few hours earlier, just moments before Percy nearly maimed me with the dirt clod. He or she-I couldn’t tell the difference-began snooping and was getting an eyeful when an older sibling barked at the end of the house, “Lloyd, get away from that window.”
   Lloyd immediately withdrew and scurried away in the darkness. His trespass was promptly reported to Mr. Latcher, and a vicious tail-whipping ensued somewhere nearby. Mr. Latcher used a stick of some variety. He kept saying, “Next time I’ll get me a bigger stick!” Lloyd thought the current one was more than enough. His screams probably could be heard at the bridge.
   When the mauling was over, Mr. Latcher boomed, “I told you kids to stay close, and to stay away from the house!”
   We could not see this episode, nor did we have to, to get the full effect.
   But I was more horrified thinking about the severity and duration of the beating I’d get if my father knew where I was at that moment. I suddenly wanted to leave.
   “How long does it take to have a baby?” I whispered to Tally. If she was weary, she didn’t show it. She rested on her knees, frozen, her eyes never leaving the window.
   “Depends. First one always takes longer.”
   “How long does the seventh one take?”
   “I don’t know. By then they just drop out, I guess. Who’s had seven?”
   “Libby’s mom. Seven or eight. I think she drops one a year.”
   I was about to doze off when the next contraction hit. Again it rattled the house and led first to weeping and then to soothing words inside the room. Then things leveled off once more, and I realized this might go on for a long time.

   When I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer, I curled up on the warm soil between the two rows of cotton. “Don’t you think we oughta leave?” I whispered.
   “No,” she said firmly, without moving.
   “Wake me up if anything happens,” I said.
   Tally readjusted herself. She sat on her rear and crossed her legs, and gently placed my head in her lap. She rubbed my shoulder and my head. I didn’t want to go to sleep, but I just couldn’t help it.
   When I awoke, I was at first lost in a strange world, lying in a field, in total blackness. I didn’t move. The ground around me wasn’t warm anymore, and my feet were cold. I opened my eyes and stared above, terrified until I realized there was cotton standing over me. I heard urgent voices nearby. Someone said, “Libby,” and I was jolted back to reality. I reached for Tally, but she was gone.
   I rose from the ground and peered through the cotton. The scene hadn’t changed. The window was still open, the candles still burning, but my mother and Gran and Mrs. Latcher were very busy.
   “Tally!” I whispered urgently, too loud, I thought, but I was more scared than ever.
   “Shhhhh!” came the reply. “Over here.”
   I could barely see the back of her head, two rows in front and over to the right. She had, of course, angled for a better view. I knifed through the stalks and was soon at her side.
   Home plate is sixty feet from the pitcher’s mound. We were much closer to the window than that. Only two rows of cotton stood between us and the edge of their side yard. Ducking low and looking up through the stalks, I could finally see the shadowy sweating faces of my mother and grandmother and Mrs. Latcher. They were staring down, looking at Libby, of course, and we could not see her. I’m not sure I wanted to at this point, but my buddy certainly did.
   The women were reaching and shoving and urging her to push and breathe and push and breathe, all the while assuring her that things were going to be fine. Things didn’t sound fine. The poor girl was bawling and grunting, occasionally yelling-high piercing shrieks that were hardly muffled by the walls of the room. Her anguished voice carried deep through the still night, and I wondered what her little brothers and sisters thought of it all.
   When Libby wasn’t grunting and crying, she was saying, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” It went on and on, time after time, a mindless chant from a suffering girl.
   “It’s okay, sweetie,” her mother replied a thousand times.
   “Can’t they do something?” I whispered.
   “Nope, not a thing. The baby comes when it wants to.”
   I wanted to ask Tally just exactly how she knew so much about childbirthing, but I held my tongue. It was none of my business, and she would probably tell me so.
   Suddenly, things were quiet and still inside the room. The Chandler women backed away, then Mrs. Latcher leaned down with a glass of water. Libby was silent.
   “What’s the matter?” I asked.
   “Nothing.”
   The break in the action gave me time to think of other things, namely getting caught. I’d seen enough. This adventure had run its course. Tally had likened it to the trip to Siler’s Creek, but it paled in comparison with that little escapade. We’d been gone for hours. What if Pappy stumbled into Ricky’s room to check on me? What if one of the Spruills woke up and started looking for Tally? What if my father got bored with it all and went home?
   The beating I’d get would hurt for days, if in fact I survived it. I was beginning to panic when Libby started heaving loudly again, while the women implored her to breathe and push.
   “There it is!” my mother said, and a frenzy followed as the women hovered frantically over their patient.
   “Keep pushin’!” Gran said loudly.
   Libby groaned even more. She was exhausted, but at least the end was in sight.
   “Don’t give up, sweetie,” her mother said. “Don’t give up.”
   Tally and I were perfectly still, mesmerized by the drama. She took my hand and squeezed it tightly. Her jaws were clenched, her eyes wide with wonder.
   “It’s comin’!” my mother said, and for a brief moment things were quiet. Then we heard the cry of a newborn, a quick gurgling protest, and a new Latcher had arrived.
   “It’s a boy,” Gran said, and she lifted up the tiny infant, still covered in blood and afterbirth.
   “It’s a boy,” Mrs. Latcher repeated.
   There was no response from Libby.
   I’d seen more than I bargained for. “Let’s go,” I said, trying to pull away, but Tally wasn’t moving.
   Gran and my mother continued working on Libby while Mrs. Latcher cleaned the baby, who was furious about something and crying loudly. I couldn’t help but think of how sad it would be to become a Latcher, to be born into that small, dirty house with a pack of other kids.
   A few minutes passed, and Percy appeared at the window. “Can we see the baby?” he asked, almost afraid to look in.
   “In a minute,” Mrs. Latcher replied.
   They gathered at the window, the entire collection of Latchers, including the father, who was now a grandfather, and waited to see the baby. They were just in front of us, halfway between home and the mound, it seemed, and I stopped breathing for fear they would hear us. But they weren’t thinking about intruders. They were looking at the open window, all still with wonder.
   Mrs. Latcher brought the infant over and leaned down so he could meet his family. He reminded me of my baseball glove; he was almost as dark, and wrapped in a towel. He was quiet for the moment and appeared unimpressed with the mob watching him.
   “How’s Libby?” one of them asked.
   “She’s fine,” Mrs. Latcher said.
   “Can we see her?”
   “No, not right now. She’s very tired.” She withdrew the baby, and the other Latchers retreated slowly to the front of the house. I could not see my father, but I knew he was hiding somewhere near his truck. Hard cash could not entice him to look at an illegitimate newborn.
   For a few minutes, the women seemed as busy as they’d been just before the birth, but then they slowly finished their work.
   My trance wore off, and I realized that we were a long way from home. “We gotta go, Tally!” I whispered urgently. She was ready and I followed her as we backtracked, cutting our way through the stalks until we were away from the house, then turning south and running with the rows of cotton. We stopped to get our bearings. The light from the window could not be seen. The moon had disappeared. There were no shapes or shadows from the Latcher place. Total darkness.
   We turned west, again stepping across the rows, cutting through the stalks, pushing them aside so they wouldn’t scrape our faces. The rows ended, and we found the trail leading to the main road. My feet hurt, and my legs ached, but we couldn’t waste time. We ran to the bridge. Tally wanted to watch the waters swirling below, but I made her keep going.
   “Let’s walk,” she said, on our side of the bridge, and for a moment we stopped running. We walked in silence, both of us trying to catch our breath. Fatigue was quickly gaining on us; the adventure had been worth it, but we were paying the price. We were approaching our farm when there was a rumbling behind us. Headlights! On the bridge! In terror, we bolted into high gear. Tally could easily outrun me, which would’ve been humiliating except that I didn’t have time for shame, and she held back a step so she wouldn’t lose me.
   I knew my father would not drive fast, not at night, on our dirt road, with Gran and my mother with him, but the headlights were still gaining on us. When we were close to our house, we jumped the shallow ditch and ran along a field. The engine was getting louder.
   “I’ll wait here, Luke,” she said, stopping near the edge of our yard. The truck was almost upon us. “You run to the back porch and sneak in. I’ll wait till they go inside. Hurry.”
   I kept running, and darted around the back corner of the house just as the truck pulled into the yard. I crept into the kitchen without a sound, then to Ricky’s room, where I grabbed a pillow and curled up on the floor, next to the window. I was too dirty and wet to get into bed, and I prayed they’d be too tired to check on me.
   They made little noise as they entered the kitchen. They whispered as they removed their shoes and boots. A ray of light slanted into my room. Their shadows moved through it, but no one looked in on little Luke. Within minutes they were in bed, and the house was quiet. I planned to wait a bit, then slip into the kitchen and wash my face and hands with a cloth. Afterward I’d crawl into the bed and sleep forever. If they heard me moving about, I’d simply say that they had awakened me when they got home.
   Formulating this plan was the last thing I remember before falling fast asleep.

Chapter 17

   I don’t know how long I slept, but it felt like only minutes. Pappy was kneeling over me, asking me why I was on the floor. I tried to answer, but nothing worked. I was paralyzed from fatigue.
   “It’s just me and you,” he said. “The rest of ‘em’s sleepin’ in.” His voice was dripping with contempt.
   Still unable to think or speak, I followed him to the kitchen, where the coffee was ready. We ate cold biscuits and sorghum in silence. Pappy, of course, was irritated because he expected a full breakfast. And he was furious because Gran and my parents were sleeping instead of preparing for the fields.
   “That Latcher girl had a baby last night,” he said, wiping his mouth. That Latcher girl and her new baby were interfering with our cotton, and our breakfast, and Pappy could barely control his temper.
   “She did?” I said, trying to appear surprised.
   “Yeah, but they still ain’t found the daddy.”
   “They haven’t?”
   “No. They wanna keep it quiet, okay, so don’t say anything about it.”
   “Yes sir.”
   “Hurry up. We gotta go.”
   “What time did they get in?”
   “Around three.”
   He left and started the tractor. I placed the dishes in the sink and looked in on my parents. They were deathly still; the only sounds were of deep breathing. I wanted to shake off my boots, crawl into bed with them, and sleep for a week. Instead, I dragged myself outside. The sun was just breaking over the trees to the east. In the distance, I could see the silhouettes of the Mexicans walking into the fields.
   The Spruills were trudging over from the front yard. Tally was nowhere to be seen. I asked Bo, and he said she was feeling bad. Maybe an upset stomach. Pappy heard this, and his frustration jumped up another notch. Another picker in bed instead of in the fields.
   All I could think was: Why hadn’t I thought of an upset stomach?
   We rode a quarter of a mile to a spot where the half-full cotton trailer was parked, rising like a monument amid the flat fields and calling us back for another day of misery. We slowly took our sacks and began picking. I waited for Pappy to move down his row, then I moved far away from him, and far away from the Spruills.
   I worked hard for an hour or so. The cotton was wet and soft to the touch, and the sun was not yet overhead. I was not motivated by money or fear; rather, I wanted a soft place to sleep. When I was so deep in the fields no one could find me, and there was enough cotton in my sack to make a nice little mattress, I hit the ground.
   My father arrived mid-morning, and out of eighty acres of cotton, just happened to select the row next to mine. “Luke!” he said angrily as he stumbled upon me. He was too startled to scold me, and by the time I came to my senses, I was complaining of an upset stomach, a headache, and for good measure I threw in the fact that I had not slept much the night before.
   “Why not?” he asked, hovering over me.
   “I was waitin’ on y’all to get home.” There was an element of truth in this.
   “And why were you waitin’ on us?”
   “I wanted to know about Libby.”
   “Well, she had a baby. What else do you wanna know?”
   “Pappy told me.” I slowly got to my feet and tried to appear as sick as possible.
   “Go to the house,” he said, and I left without a word.
   Chinese and North Korean troops ambushed an American convoy near Pyongyang, killing at least eighty and taking many prisoners. Mr. Edward R. Murrow opened his nightly news with the story, and Gran started praying. As always, she was seated across the kitchen table from me. My mother was leaning on the kitchen sink, and she, too, stopped everything and closed her eyes. I heard Pappy cough on the back porch. He was also listening.
   Peace talks had been abandoned again, and the Chinese were moving more troops into Korea. Mr. Murrow said that a truce, once so close, now seemed impossible. His words were a little heavier that night, or maybe we were just more exhausted than usual. He broke for a commercial, then returned with a story about an earthquake.
   Gran and my mother were moving slowly around the kitchen when Pappy entered. He tousled my hair as if things were just fine. “What’s for supper?” he asked.
   “Pork chops,” my mother answered.
   Then my father drifted in, and we took our places. After Pappy blessed the food, all of us prayed for Ricky. There was practically no conversation; everyone was thinking about Korea, but nobody wanted to mention it.
   My mother was talking about a project her Sunday school class was pondering, when I heard the faint squeaking of the screen door out on the back porch. No one heard the noise but me. There was no wind, nothing to shove the door one way or the other. I stopped eating.
   “What is it, Luke?” Gran asked.
   “I thought I heard somethin’,” I said.
   Everyone looked at the door. Nothing. They resumed eating.
   Then Percy Latcher stepped into the kitchen, and we froze. He took two steps through the door and stopped, as if he were lost. He was barefoot, covered with dirt from head to foot, and his eyes were red, as if he’d been crying for hours. He looked at us; we looked at him. Pappy started to stand up and deal with the situation. I said, “It’s Percy Latcher.”
   Pappy remained in his seat, holding a knife in his right hand. Percy’s eyes were glazed, and when he breathed, a low moaning sound came forth as if he were trying to suppress a rage. Or maybe he was wounded, or somebody across the river was hurt and he’d raced to our house for help.
   “What is it, boy?” Pappy barked at him. “It’s common courtesy to knock before you come in.”
   Percy fixed his unflinching eyes upon Pappy and said, “Ricky done it.”
   “Ricky done what?” Pappy asked, his voice suddenly softer, already in retreat.
   “Ricky done it.”
   “Ricky done what?” Pappy repeated.
   “That baby’s his,” Percy said. “It’s Ricky’s.”
   “Shut up, boy!” Pappy snapped at him and clutched the edge of the table as if he might bolt for the door to whip the poor kid.
   “She didn’t wanna do it, but he talked her into it,” Percy said, staring at me instead of Pappy. “Then he went off to the war.”
   “Is that what she’s tellin’?” Pappy asked angrily.
   “Don’t yell, Eli,” Gran said. “He’s just a boy.” Gran took a deep breath, and seemed to be the first to at least consider the possibility that she had delivered her own grandchild.
   “That’s what she’s tellin’,” Percy said. “And it’s true.”
   “Luke, go to your room and shut the door,” my father said, jolting me out of a trance.
   “No,” my mother said before I could move. “This affects all of us. He can stay.”
   “He shouldn’t hear this.”
   “He’s already heard it.”
   “He should stay,” Gran said, siding with my mother and settling the matter. They were assuming I wanted to stay. What I really wanted to do at that moment was to run outside, find Tally, and go for a long walk-away from her crazy family, away from Ricky and Korea, away from Percy Latcher. But I didn’t move.
   “Did your parents send you over here?” my mother asked.
   “No ma’am. They don’t know where I am. The baby cried all day. Libby’s gone crazy, talkin’ ‘bout jumpin’ off the bridge, killin’ herself, stuff like that, and she told me what Ricky done to her.”
   “Did she tell your parents?”
   “Yes ma’am. Everybody knows now.”
   “You mean everybody in your family knows.”
   “Yes ma’am. We ain’t told nobody else.”
   “Don’t,” Pappy grunted. He was settling back into his chair, his shoulders beginning to sag, defeat sinking in rapidly. If Libby Latcher claimed Ricky was the father, then everyone would believe her. He wasn’t home to defend himself. And in a swearing contest, Libby would likely have more supporters than Ricky, given his reputation as a hell-raiser.
   “Have you had supper, son?” Gran asked.
   “No ma’am.”
   “Are you hungry?”
   “Yes ma’am.”
   The table was covered with food that would not be touched. We Chandlers certainly had just lost our appetites. Pappy shoved back from the table and said, “He can have mine.” He bounced to his feet, left the kitchen, and went to the front porch. My father followed him without a word.
   “Sit here, son,” Gran said, indicating Pappy’s chair.
   They fixed him a plate of food and a glass of sweet tea. He sat down and ate slowly. Gran drifted to the front porch, leaving me and my mother to sit with Percy. He did not speak unless he was spoken to.

   After a lengthy discussion on the front porch, a meeting Percy and I missed because we were banished to the back porch, Pappy and my father loaded the boy up and took him home. I sat in the swing with Gran as they drove away, just as it was getting dark. My mother was shelling butter beans.
   “Will Pappy talk to Mr. Latcher?” I asked.
   “I’m sure he will,” my mother said.
   “What will they talk about?” I was full of questions because I assumed I now had the right to know everything.
   “Oh, I’m sure they’ll talk about the baby,” Gran said. “And Ricky and Libby.”
   “Will they fight?”
   “No. They’ll reach an agreement.”
   “What kind of agreement?”
   “Everybody’ll agree not to talk about the baby, and to keep Ricky’s name out of it.”
   “That includes you, Luke,” my mother said. “This is a dark secret.”
   “I ain’t tellin’ nobody,” I said, with conviction. The thought of folks knowing that the Chandlers and the Latchers were somehow related horrified me.
   “Did Ricky really do that?” I asked.
   “Of course not,” Gran said. “The Latchers are not trustworthy people. They’re not good Christians; that’s how the girl got pregnant. They’ll probably want some money out of the deal.”
   “Money?”
   “We don’t know what they want,” my mother said.
   “Do you think he did it, Mom?”
   She hesitated for a second before saying, softly, “No.”
   “I don’t think he did, either,” I said, making it unanimous. I would defend Ricky forever, and if anybody mentioned the Latcher baby, then I’d be ready to fight.
   But Ricky was the likeliest suspect, and we all knew it. The Latchers rarely left their farm. There was a Jeter boy about two miles away, but I’d never seen him anywhere near the river. Nobody lived close to the Latchers but us. Ricky had been the nearest tomcat.
   Church business suddenly became important, and the women talked about it nonstop. I had many more questions about the Latcher baby, but I couldn’t sneak in a word. I finally gave up and went to the kitchen to listen to the Cardinals game.
   I sorely wanted to be in the back of our pickup over at the Latchers’, eavesdropping on the men as they handled the situation.

   Long after I’d been sent to bed, I lay awake, fighting sleep because the air was alive with voices. When my grandparents talked in bed, I could hear their soft, low sounds creeping down the narrow hallway. I couldn’t understand a word, and they tried their best to make sure no one heard them. But at times, when they were worried or when they were thinking about Ricky, they were forced to talk late at night. Lying in his bed, listening to their muted utterances, I knew things were serious.
   My parents retreated to the front porch, where they sat on the steps, waiting for a breeze and a break from the relentless heat. At first they whispered, but their burdens were too heavy, and their words could not be suppressed. Certain that I was asleep, they talked louder than they normally would have.
   I slipped out of bed and slid across the floor like a snake. At the window, I glanced out and saw them in their familiar spot, backs to me, a few feet away.
   I absorbed every sound. Things had not gone well at the Latchers’. Libby had been somewhere in the back of the house with the baby, who cried nonstop. All the Latchers seemed frayed and worn out by the crying. Mr. Latcher was angry with Percy for coming to our house, but he was even angrier when he talked about Libby. She was telling that she didn’t want to fool around with Ricky, but he made her anyway. Pappy denied this was the case, but he had nothing to stand on. He denied everything, and said he doubted if Ricky had ever met Libby.
   But they had witnesses. Mr. Latcher himself said that on two occasions, just after Christmas, Ricky pulled up in their front yard in Pappy’s pickup and took Libby for a ride. They drove to Monette, where Ricky bought her a soda.
   My father speculated that if that really did happen, then Ricky chose Monette because fewer people would know him there. He’d never be seen in Black Oak with the daughter of a sharecropper.
   “She’s a beautiful girl,” my mother said.
   The next witness was a boy of no more than ten. Mr. Latcher summoned him from the pack huddled around the front steps. His testimony was that he’d seen Pappy’s truck parked at the end of a field row, next to a thicket. He sneaked up on the truck, and got close enough to see Ricky and Libby kissing. He kept it quiet because he was scared, and had come forth with the story only a few hours earlier.
   The Chandlers, of course, had no witnesses. On our side of the river, there’d been no hint of a budding romance. Ricky certainly would not have told anyone. Pappy would’ve hit him.
   Mr. Latcher said he suspected all along that Ricky was the father, but Libby had denied it. And in truth, there were a couple of other boys who’d shown an interest in her. But now she was telling everything-that Ricky had forced himself on her, that she didn’t want the baby.
   “Do they want us to take it?” my mother asked.
   I almost groaned in pain.
   “No, I don’t think so,” my father said. “What’s another baby around their house?”
   My mother thought the baby deserved a good home. My father said it was out of the question until Ricky said it was his child. Not likely, knowing Ricky.
   “Did you see the baby?” my mother asked.
   “No.”
   “He’s the spittin’ image of Ricky,” she said.
   My one recollection of the newest Latcher was that of a small object that reminded me, at the time, of my baseball glove. He barely looked human. But my mother and Gran spent hours analyzing the faces of people to determine who favored whom, and where the eyes came from, and the nose and hair. They’d look at babies at church and say, “Oh, he’s definitely a Chisenhall.” Or, “Look at those eyes, got ‘em from his grandmother.”
   They all looked like little dolls to me.
   “So you think he’s a Chandler?” my father said.
   “No doubt about it.”

Chapter 18

   It was Saturday again, but Saturday without the usual excitement of going to town. I knew we were going because we had never skipped two Saturdays in a row. Gran needed groceries, especially flour and coffee, and my mother needed to go to the drugstore. My father hadn’t been to the Co-op in two weeks. I didn’t have a vote in the matter, but my mother knew how important the Saturday matinee was to the proper development of a child, especially a farm kid with little contact with the rest of the world. Yes, we were going to town, but without the usual enthusiasm.
   A new horror was upon us, one that was far more frightening than all this business about Hank Spruill. What if somebody heard what the Latchers were telling? It took just one person, one whisper at one end of Main Street, and the gossip would roar through the town like a wildfire. The ladies in Pop and Pearl’s would drop their baskets and cover their mouths in disbelief. The old farmers hanging around the Co-op would smirk and say, “I’m not surprised.” The older kids from church would point at me as if I were somehow the guilty one. The town would seize the rumor as if it were the gospel truth, and Chandler blood would be forever tainted.
   So I didn’t want to go to town. I wanted to stay home and play baseball and maybe go for a walk with Tally.
   Little was said over breakfast. We were still very subdued, and I think this was because we all knew the truth. Ricky had left behind a little memory. I wondered to myself if he knew about Libby and the baby, but I wasn’t about to bring up the subject. I’d ask my mother later.
   “Carnival’s in town,” Pappy said. Suddenly the day was better. My fork froze in midair.
   “What time are we goin’?” I asked.
   “The same. Just after lunch,” Pappy said.
   “How late can we stay?”
   “We’ll see about that,” he said.
   The carnival was a wandering band of gypsies with funny accents who lived in Florida during the winter and hit the small farming towns in the fall, when the harvest was in full swing and folks had money in their pockets. They usually arrived abruptly on a Thursday and then set up on the baseball field without permission, and stayed through the weekend. Nothing excited Black Oak like the carnival.
   A different one came to town each year. One had an elephant and a giant loggerhead turtle. One had no animals at all but specialized in odd humans-tumbling midgets, the girl with six fingers, the man with an extra leg. But all carnivals had a Ferris wheel, a merry-go-round, and two or three other rides that squeaked and rattled and generally terrified all the mothers. The Slinger had been such a ride, a circle of swings on chains that went faster and faster until the riders were flying parallel to the ground and screaming and begging to stop. A couple of years earlier in Monette, a chain had snapped, and a little girl had been flung across the midway and into the side of a trailer. The next week the Slinger was in Black Oak, with new chains, and folks lined up to ride it.
   There were booths where you threw rings and darts and shot pellet pistols to win prizes. Some carnivals had fortune-tellers, others had photo booths, still others had magicians. They were all loud and colorful and filled with excitement. Word would spread quickly through the county, and people would flock in, and in a few hours Black Oak would be packed. I was desperate to go.
   Perhaps, I thought, the excitement of the carnival would suppress any curiosity about Libby Latcher. I choked down my biscuits and ran outside.
   “The carnival’s in town,” I whispered to Tally when we met at the tractor for the ride to the fields.
   “Y’all goin’?” she asked.
   “Of course. Nobody misses the carnival.”
   “I know a secret,” she whispered, her eyes darting around.
   “What is it?”
   “Somethin’ I heard last night.”
   “Where’d you hear it?”
   “By the front porch.”
   I didn’t like the way she was stringing me along. “What is it?”
   She leaned even closer. “ ‘Bout Ricky and that Latcher girl. Guess you got a new cousin.” Her words were cruel, and her eyes looked mean. This was not the Tally I knew.
   “What were you doin’ out there?” I asked.
   “None of your business.”
   Pappy came from the house and walked to the tractor. “You’d better not tell,” I said through clenched teeth.
   “We keep our secrets, remember?” she said, moving away.
   “Yeah.”
   I ate lunch quickly, then hurried about the task of getting myself scrubbed and bathed. My mother knew I was anxious to get to town, so she wasted no time with her scouring.
   All ten Mexicans piled into the back of the truck with me and my father, and we pulled away from our farm. Cowboy had picked cotton all week with broken ribs, a fact that had not gone unnoticed by Pappy and my father. They admired him greatly. “They’re tough people,” Pappy had said.
   The Spruills were scurrying about, trying to catch us. Tally had spread the word about the carnival, and even Trot seemed to be moving with a purpose.
   When we crossed the river, I looked long and hard down the field road that led to the Latchers’ place, but their little shack was not visible. I glanced at my father. He was looking, too, his eyes hard, almost angry. How could those people have intruded into our lives?
   We crept along the gravel road, and soon the Latcher fields were behind us. By the time we stopped at the highway, I was once again dreaming of the carnival.
   Our driver, of course, would never get in a hurry. With the truck so loaded with people, I doubted if it would do thirty-seven, and Pappy certainly didn’t push it. It took an hour, it seemed.
   Stick’s patrol car was parked by the Baptist church. Traffic on Main was already slow, the sidewalks brimming with activity. We parked, and the Mexicans scattered. Stick appeared from under a shade tree and walked straight for us. Gran and my mother headed for the stores. I hung back with the men, certain that serious matters were about to be discussed.
   “Howdy, Eli. Jesse,” Stick said, his hat tilted to one side, a blade of grass in the corner of his mouth.
   “Afternoon, Stick,” Pappy said. My father just nodded. They had not come to town to spend time with Stick, and their irritation was just under the surface.
   “I’m thinkin’ ‘bout arrestin’ that Spruill boy,” he said.
   “I don’t care what you do,” Pappy shot back, his anger rising fast. “Just wait till the cotton’s in.”
   “Surely you can wait a month,” my father said.
   Stick chewed on the grass, spat, and said, “I suppose so.”
   “He’s a good worker,” my father said. “And there’s plenty of cotton. You take him now, and we’ll lose six field hands. You know how those people are.”
   “I suppose I could wait,” Stick said again. He seemed anxious to reach a compromise. “I been talkin’ to a lot of people, and I ain’t so sure your boy here is tellin’ the truth.” He gave me a long look as he said this, and I kicked gravel.
   “Leave him out of it, Stick,” my father said. “He’s just a kid.”
   “He’s seven years old!” Pappy snapped. “Why don’t you find you some real witnesses.”
   Stick’s shoulders drew back as if he’d been hit.
   “Here’s the deal,” Pappy said. “You leave Hank alone until the cotton’s in, then I’ll drive to town and let you know we’re finished with him. At that point, I don’t care what you do with him.”
   “That’ll work,” Stick said.
   “But I still think you ain’t got a case. It was three against one, Stick, and no jury will convict.”
   “We’ll see,” Stick said smugly. He walked away, thumbs in his pockets, with just enough of a swagger to annoy us.
   “Can I go to the carnival?” I asked.
   “Of course you can,” Pappy said.
   “How much money do you have?” my father asked.
   “Four dollars.”
   “How much you gonna spend?”
   “Four dollars.”
   “I think two’s enough.”
   “How’bout three?”
   “Make it two-fifty, okay?”
   “Yes sir.” I ran from the church, along the sidewalk, darting between people, and was soon at the baseball field, which was across the street from the Co-op, the Dixie theater, and the pool hall. The carnival covered it all, from the backstop to the outfield fence. The Ferris wheel stood in the middle, surrounded by the smaller rides, the booths, and the midway. Shrill music rattled from the loudspeakers on the merry-go-round and the carousel. Long lines of people were already waiting. I could smell popcorn and corn dogs and something frying in grease.
   I found the trailer with the cotton candy. It cost a dime, but I would’ve paid much more for it. Dewayne saw me at the midway as I was watching some older boys shoot air guns at little ducks that swam in a pool. They never hit them, and this was because, according to Pappy, the gun sights were crooked.
   Candied apples were also a dime. We bought one apiece and took our time inspecting the carnival. There was a witch in a long black dress, black hair, black everything, and for twenty-five cents she could tell your future. A dark-eyed old lady could do the same thing, for the same price, with tarot cards. A flamboyant man with a microphone could guess your age or your weight for a dime. If he didn’t get within three years or ten pounds you won a prize. The midway had the usual collection of games-softballs thrown at milk jugs, basketballs aimed at rims that were too small, darts at balloons, hoops over bottlenecks.
   We strolled through the carnival, savoring the noise and excitement. A crowd was gathering at the far end, near the backstop, and we drifted over. A large sign proclaimed the presence of “Samson, the World’s Greatest Wrestler, Direct from Egypt,” and under it was a square mat with padded poles in the corners and ropes around it. Samson was not in the ring, but his appearance was only moments away, according to Delilah, a tall, shapely woman with the microphone. Her costume revealed all of her legs and most of her chest, and I was certain that never before had so much skin been exposed in public in Black Oak. She explained, to a silent crowd mostly of men, that the rules were simple. Samson paid ten-to-one to any person who could stay in the ring with him for one minute. “Only sixty seconds!” she yelled. “And the money is yours!” Her accent was strange enough to convince us that they were indeed from another land. I’d never seen anybody from Egypt, though I knew from Sunday school that Moses had had some adventures there.
   She paraded back and forth in front of the ring, all eyes following her every move. “On his current tour, Samson has won three hundred matches in a row,” she said, tauntingly. “In fact, the last time Samson lost was in Russia, when it took three men to beat him, and they had to cheat to do it.”
   Music started blaring from a lone speaker hanging on the sign. “And now, ladies and gentlemen!” she shouted above the music, “I present to you, the one, the only, the greatest wrestler in the world, the incredible Samson!”
   I held my breath.
   He bounded from behind a curtain and jumped into the ring amid tepid applause. Why should we clap for him? He was there to whip us. His hair was the first thing I noticed. It was black and wavy and fell to his shoulders like a woman’s. I’d seen illustrations of Old Testament stories where the men had such hair, but that was five thousand years ago. He was a giant of a man, with a thick body and ridges of muscles clumped around his shoulders and down his chest. His arms were covered with black hair and looked strong enough to lift buildings. So that we might get the full benefit of his physique, Samson wasn’t wearing a shirt. Even after we’d spent months in the fields, his skin was much darker than ours, and now I was really convinced that he was from parts unknown. He had fought Russians!
   He strutted around the ring in step with the music, curling his arms and flexing his mammoth muscles. He performed like this until we’d witnessed all he had, which was more than enough, in my opinion.
   “Who’s first?” Delilah yelled into the microphone as the music died. “Two-dollar minimum!”
   The crowd was suddenly still. Only a fool would crawl into that ring.
   “I ain’t scared,” somebody yelled, and we watched in disbelief as a young man I’d never seen before stepped forward and handed two dollars to Delilah. She took the money and said, “Ten-to-one. Stay in the ring for sixty seconds, and you’ll win twenty dollars.” She shoved the microphone at the young man and said, “What’s your name?”
   “Parley.”
   “Good luck, Parley.”
   He climbed into the ring as if he had no fear of Samson, who’d been watching without the slightest hint of worry. Delilah took a mallet and struck a bell on the side of the ring. “Sixty seconds!” she said.
   Parley moved around a bit, then retreated to a corner as Samson took a step in his direction. Both men studied each other, Samson looking down with contempt, Parley looking up with anticipation.
   “Forty-five seconds!” she called out.
   Samson moved closer, and Parley darted to the other side of the ring. Being much smaller, he was also much quicker, and apparently was using the strategy of flight. Samson stalked him; Parley kept darting.
   “Thirty seconds!”
   The ring was not big enough to run much, and Samson had caught his share of scared rabbits. He tripped Parley during one of his sprints, and when he picked him up, he wrapped an arm tightly around the boy’s head and began a headlock.
   “Oh, looks like the Guillotine!” Delilah gushed, with a little too much drama. “Twenty seconds!”
   Samson twisted his prey and grimaced with sadistic pleasure, while poor Parley flailed at his side.
   “Ten seconds!”
   Samson whirled and then flung Parley across the ring. Before Farley could get up, the World’s Greatest Wrestler grabbed him by the foot, lifted him in the air, held him over the ropes, and with two seconds to go, dropped him to the ground for the victory.
   “Wow, that was close, Samson!” Delilah said into the microphone.
   Parley was in a daze, but he walked away in one piece and seemed to be proud of himself. He had proved his manhood, had shown no fear, and had come within two seconds of winning twenty bucks. The next volunteer was likewise a stranger, a bulky young man named Claude, who paid three dollars for a chance to win thirty. He weighed twice as much as Parley but was much slower, and within ten seconds Samson had nailed him with a Flying Dropkick and wrapped him into a Pretzel. With ten seconds to go, he hoisted Claude over his head, and in a magnificent display of strength, walked to the edge of the ring and tossed him.
   Claude, too, walked away proudly. It was apparent that Samson, despite his theatrics and menacing demeanor, was a good sport and would not harm anyone. And since most young men wanted to have some contact with Delilah, a line soon formed at her side.
   It was quite a spectacle, and Dewayne and I sat for a long time watching Samson dispose of one victim after another with all the moves in his repertoire. The Boston Crab, the Scissors, the Piledriver, the Jackhammer, the Body Slam. Delilah merely had to mention one of the maneuvers in her microphone and Samson would quickly demonstrate it.
   After an hour, Samson was soaked with sweat and needed a break, so Dewayne and I scooted off to ride the Ferris wheel twice. We were debating whether to get another helping of cotton candy when we heard some young men talking about the girlie show.
   “She takes off everything!” one of them said as he walked by, and we forgot about the cotton candy. We followed them to the end of the midway, where the gypsies’ trailers were parked. Behind the trailers was a small tent that had obviously been erected so that no one would see it. A few men smoked and waited, and they all had a guilty look about them. There was music coming from the tent.
   Some carnivals had girlie shows. Ricky, not surprisingly, had been seen leaving one the year before, and this had caused quite an uproar in our house. He wouldn’t have been caught if Mr. Ross Lee Hart had not also been caught. Mr. Hart was a steward in the Methodist church, a farmer who owned his land, an upright citizen who was married to a woman with a big mouth. She went searching for him late on a Saturday night, in the midst of the carnival, and happened to see him leaving the forbidden tent. She wailed at the sight of her wayward husband; he ducked behind the trailers. She gave chase, yelling and threatening, and Black Oak had a new story.
   Mrs. Hart, for some reason, told everyone what her husband had done, and the poor man was an outcast for many months. She also let it be known that leaving the tent right behind him was Ricky Chandler. We suffered in silence. Never go to a girlie show in your hometown was the unwritten rule. Drive to Monette or Lake City or Caraway, but don’t do it in Black Oak.
   Dewayne and I didn’t recognize any of the men hanging around the girlie tent. We circled through the trailers and flanked in from the opposite side, but a large dog had been chained to the ground, guarding against Peeping Toms like us. We retreated and decided to wait for darkness.
   As four o’clock approached, we had to make a painful decisiongo to the matinee, or stay at the carnival. We were leaning toward the picture show when Delilah appeared at the wrestling ring. She had changed costumes, and was now wearing a two-piece red outfit that revealed even more. The crowd flocked to her, and before long Samson was once again hurling farm boys and hillbillies and even an occasional Mexican out of the ring.
   His only challenge came at dark. Mr. Horsefly Walker had a deaf and dumb son who weighed three hundred pounds. We called him Grunt, not out of disrespect or cruelty-he’d just always been called that. Horsefly put up five dollars, and Grunt slowly climbed into the ring.
   “He’s a big one, Samson,” Delilah purred into the mike.
   Samson knew it might take a bit longer to shove three hundred pounds out of the ring, so he attacked immediately. He went in low with a Chinese Take-Down, a move designed to slap both ankles together and cause the opponent to collapse. Grunt fell all right, but he fell on Samson, who couldn’t help but groan in pain. Some of the crowd yelled, too, and began cheering on Grunt, who, of course, couldn’t hear a thing. Both men rolled and kicked around the ring until Grunt pinned Samson for a second.
   “Forty seconds!” Delilah said, the clock running much slower with Samson flat on his back. He kicked a few times, to no avail, then employed the Jersey Flip, a quick move in which his feet swung up and caught Grunt by the ears, then rolled him backward. Samson sprang to his feet as Delilah narrated the moves. A Flying Dropkick stunned Grunt.
   “Fifteen seconds!” she said, the clock once again moving quickly. Grunt charged like a mad bull, and both men went down again. The crowd cheered again. Horsefly was hopping around the outside of the ring, delirious. They grappled for a while, then Delilah said, “Ten seconds.”
   There were some boos directed at the timekeeper. Samson twisted and yanked Grunt’s arm behind his back, grabbed a foot, and slid the poor boy across the ring and through the ropes. He landed at his father’s feet. Horsefly yelled, “You cheatin’ sonofabitch!”
   Samson took offense to this language and motioned for Horsefly to enter the ring himself. Horsefly took a step forward and Samson spread the ropes. Delilah, who’d obviously seen such threats many times, said, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. He hurts people when he’s angry.”
   By then Horsefly was looking for a reason to hold his ground. Samson looked ten feet tall standing at the edge of the ring, sneering down. Horsefly bent down to check on Grunt, who was rubbing his shoulder and appeared to be on the verge of tears. Samson laughed at them as they walked away, then to taunt us, began flexing his biceps as he strolled around the ring. A few in the crowd hissed at him, and that was exactly what he wanted.
   He handled a few more challengers, then Delilah announced that her man had to eat dinner. They’d be back in an hour for their final exhibition.
   It was now dark. The air was filled with the sounds of the carnival; the excited screams of kids on the rides, the whoops and hollers of the winners at the booths on the midway, the music shrieking forth from a dozen assorted speakers, all playing different tunes, the constant jabbering of the barkers as they enticed folks to part with their money to view the world’s largest turtle or to win another prize, and, above all, the overwhelming electricity of the crowd. People were so thick you couldn’t stir ‘em with a stick, as Gran liked to say. Mobs crowded around the booths, watching and cheering. Long lines snaked around the rides. Packs of Mexicans moved slowly about, staring in amazement, but for the most part, hanging on to their money. I had never seen so many people in one place.
   I found my parents near the street, drinking lemonade and watching the spectacle from a safe distance. Pappy and Gran were already at the truck, ready to leave but willing to wait. The carnival came only once a year.
   “How much money you got?” my father asked.
   “ ‘Bout a dollar,” I said.
   “That Ferris wheel doesn’t look safe, Luke,” my mother said.
   “I’ve been on it twice. It’s okay.”
   “I’ll give you another dollar if you won’t ride it again.”
   “It’s a deal.”
   She handed me a dollar bill. We agreed that I would check back in an hour or so. I found Dewayne again, and we decided it was time to investigate the girlie show. We darted through the throng along the midway and slowed near the gypsies’ trailers. It was much darker back there. In front of the tent were some men smoking cigarettes, and in the door was a young woman in a skimpy costume swinging her hips and dancing in a naughty way.
   As Baptists, we knew that all manner of dancing was not only inherently evil but downright sinful. It was right up there with drinking and cussing on the list of major transgressions.
   The dancer was not as attractive as Delilah, nor did she reveal as much or move as gracefully. Of course, Delilah had years of experience and had traveled the world.
   We sneaked along the shadows, advancing slowly until a strange voice from nowhere said, “That’s far enough. You boys get outta here.” We froze and looked around, and about that time we heard a familiar voice yell from behind us, “Repent, ye workers of iniquity! Repent!”
   It was the Reverend Akers, standing tall with his Bible in one hand while a long, crooked finger pointed out from the fist of the other.
   “You brood of vipers!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.
   I don’t know if the young lady stopped dancing or if the men scattered. I didn’t bother to look. Dewayne and I hit the ground on all fours and crawled like hunted prey through the maze of trailers and trucks until we saw light between two of the booths on the midway. We emerged and got lost in the crowd.
   “You think he saw us?” Dewayne asked when we were safe.
   “I don’t know. I doubt it.”
   We circled around and wandered back to a safe spot near the gypsies’ trailers. Brother Akers was in fine form. He’d moved to within thirty feet of the tent and was casting out demons at the top of his voice. And he was having success. The dancer was gone, as were the men who’d been hanging around smoking. He’d killed the show, although I suspected they were all inside, hunkering down and waiting him out.
   But Delilah was back, wearing yet another costume. It was made of leopard skin and barely covered the essentials, and I knew Brother Akers would have something to say about it the next morning. He loved the carnival because it gave him so much material for the pulpit.
   A regular mob crowded around the wrestling ring, gawking at Delilah and waiting for Samson. Again, she introduced him with the lines we’d already heard. He finally jumped into the ring, and he, too, had chosen leopard skin. Tight shorts, no shirt, shiny black leather boots. He strutted and posed and tried to get us to boo him.
   My friend Jackie Moon crawled into the ring first, and like most victims, engaged the strategy of dodging. He darted around effectively for twenty seconds until Samson had had enough. A Guillotine, then a Turkish Roll-Down, as Delilah explained, and Jackie was on the grass not far from where I was standing. He laughed. “That wasn’t so bad.”
   Samson wasn’t about to hurt anybody; it would harm his business. But as his final exhibition wore on, he became much cockier and yelled at us constantly, “Is there a man among you?” His accent was of some exotic variety; his voice was deep and frightening. “Are there no warriors in Black Oak, Arkansas?”
   I wished I were seven feet tall. Then I’d hop up there and attack ol’ Samson while the crowd went wild. I’d whip him good, send him flying, and become the biggest hero in Black Oak. But, for now, I could only boo him.
   Hank Spruill entered the picture. He walked along the edge of the ring between bouts, and stopped long enough to get Samson’s attention. The crowd was silent as the two glared at each other. Samson walked to the edge of the ring and said, “Come on in, little one.”
   Hank, of course, just sneered. Then he walked over to Delilah and took money from his pocket.
   “Ooh la la, Samson,” she said, taking his cash. “Twenty-five dollars!”
   Everyone seemed to be mumbling in disbelief. “Twenty-five bucks!” said a man from behind. “That’s a week’s work.”
   “Yeah, but he might win two hundred fifty,” said another man.
   As the crowd squeezed together, Dewayne and I moved to the front so we could see through the grown-ups.
   “What’s your name?” Delilah asked, shoving the microphone up.
   “Hank Spruill,” he growled. “You still payin’ ten-to-one?”
   “That’s the deal, big boy. Are you sure you want to bet twenty-five dollars?”
   “Yep. And all I gotta do is stay in the ring for one minute?”
   “Yes, sixty seconds. You know Samson hasn’t lost a fight in five years. Last time he lost was in Russia, and they cheated him.”
   “Don’t care ‘bout Russia,” Hank said, taking off his shirt. “Any other rules?”
   “No.” She turned to the crowd, and with as much drama as she could muster, she yelled, “Ladies and gentlemen. The great Samson has been challenged to his biggest fight of all time. Mr. Hank Spruill has put up twenty-five dollars for a ten-to-one fight. Never before in history has someone made so large a challenge.”
   Samson was posturing around the ring, shaking his sizable locks and looking forward to the skirmish with great anticipation.
   “Lemme see the money,” Hank growled at Delilah.
   “Here it is,” she said, using the microphone.
   “No, I wanna see the two-fifty.”
   “We won’t be needing it,” she said with a laugh, a chuckle with just a trace of nervousness. But she lowered the microphone, and they haggled over the details. Bo and Dale appeared from the crowd, and Hank made them stand next to the small table where Delilah kept the money. When he was convinced the money was in place, he stepped into the ring, where the great Samson stood with his massive arms folded over his chest.
   “Ain’t he the one who killed that Sisco boy?” someone asked from behind us.
   “That’s him,” was the reply.
   “He’s almost as big as Samson.”
   He was a few inches shorter, and not as thick in the chest, but Hank seemed oblivious to any danger. Samson started dancing around on one side of the ring while Hank watched him and stretched his arms.
   “Are you ready?” Delilah wailed into the microphone, and the crowd pressed forward. She hit the bell. Both fighters eyed each other fiercely. Hank stayed in his corner, though. The clock was on his side. After a few seconds, Samson, whom I suspected knew he had his hands full, waded in, dancing and juking and bobbing like a real wrestler is supposed to do. Hank was still.
   “Come on out, boy!” Samson boomed from five feet away, but Hank kept to his corner.
   “Forty-five seconds,” Delilah said.
   Samson’s mistake was to assume that it was a wrestling match, instead of a brawl. He came in low, in an effort to apply one of his many grips or holds, and for a split second left his face open. Hank struck like a rattler. His right hand shot forward with a punch that was almost too quick to be seen, and it landed flush on the mighty Samson’s jaw.
   Samson’s head jerked sharply, his handsome hair slung in all directions. The impact caused a cracking sound. Stan Musial could not have hit a baseball any harder.
   Samson’s eyes rolled back in his gigantic head. Because of its size, it took Samson’s body a second to realize that its head had been crippled. One leg went woozy and bent at the knee. Then the other leg collapsed, and the World’s Greatest Wrestler, Direct from Egypt, landed on his back with a thud. The small ring bounced and its ropes shook. Samson appeared to be dead.
   Hank relaxed in his corner by placing his arms on the top ropes. He was in no hurry. Poor Delilah was speechless. She tried to say something to assure us that this was just part of the exhibition, but at the same time she wanted to jump into the ring and tend to Samson. The crowd was stunned.
   In the center of the ring, Samson began groaning and trying to get to his feet. He made it to his hands and knees, and rocked back and forth a few times before he managed to pull a foot forward. With one great lurch he tried to stand, but his feet weren’t with him. He lunged toward the ropes and managed to catch them to break his fall. He was looking directly at us, but the poor guy saw nothing. His eyes were red and wild, and he seemed to have no idea where he was. He hung on the ropes, tottering, trying to regain his senses, still searching for his feet.
   Mr. Horsefly Walker ran up to the ring and yelled to Hank, “Kill the sonofabitch! Go ahead, finish him off!”
   But Hank didn’t move. Instead, he just yelled, “Time!” but Delilah had forgotten about the clock.
   There were a few cheers and jeers from the crowd, but for the most part, it was subdued. The spectators were shocked at the sight of Samson floundering, his senses knocked out of him.
   Samson turned and tried to focus his eyes on Hank. Clutching the ropes for support, he stumbled a couple of steps, then made one last, desperate lunge. Hank simply ducked out of the way, and Samson landed hard on the corner pole. The ropes strained with his weight and the other three poles seemed ready to break. Samson was groaning and thrashing about like a bear who’d been shot. He pulled his feet under him and steadied himself enough to turn around. He should’ve stayed on the mat. Hank darted in and threw an overhand right, a punch that began in the center of the ring and landed exactly where the first one did. Since his target was defenseless, he reloaded and landed a third and final blow. Samson went down in a heap. Delilah screamed and scrambled into the ring. Hank relaxed in his corner, arms on the top ropes, grinning, no concern whatsoever for his opponent.
   I wasn’t sure what to do, and most of the other spectators were quiet, too. On the one hand, it was good to see an Arkansas boy so thoroughly crush this Egyptian giant. But on the other hand, it was Hank Spruill, and he’d used his fists. His victory was tainted, not that it mattered to him. All of us would’ve felt better if a local boy had battled Samson evenly.
   When Hank was certain that time had expired, he stepped through the ropes and jumped to the ground. Bo and Dale had the money, and the three of them disappeared.
   “He done killed Samson,” someone behind me said. The World’s Greatest Wrestler was flat on his back, arms and legs spread wide, his woman crouched over him, trying to wake him. I felt sorry for them. They were wonderfully colorful, an act we wouldn’t see again for a long time, if ever. In fact, I doubted if Samson and Delilah would ever return to Black Oak, Arkansas.
   When he sat up, we relaxed. A handful of good folks clapped softly for him, then the crowd began to break up.
   Why couldn’t Hank join the carnival? He could get paid for beating up people, and it would get him off our farm. I decided to mention it to Tally.
   Poor Samson had worked hard all day in the heat, and in a split second had lost the day’s wages. What a way to make a living. I’d finally seen a worse job than picking cotton.

Chapter 19

   In the spring and winter, Sunday afternoons were often used as a time for visiting. We’d finish lunch and take our naps, then load into the pickup and drive to Lake City or Paragould and drop in completely unannounced on some relatives or old friends, who’d always be delighted to see us. Or perhaps they’d drop in on us. “Y’all come see us” was the common phrase, and folks took it literally. No arrangements or forewarnings were necessary, or even possible. We didn’t have a telephone and neither did our relatives or friends.
   But visiting was not a priority in the late summer and fall because the work was heavier and the afternoons were so hot. We forgot about aunts and uncles for a time, but we knew we’d catch up later.
   I was sitting on the front porch, listening to the Cardinals and watching my mother and Gran shell peas and butter beans, when I saw a cloud of dust coming from the bridge. “Car’s comin’,” I said, and they looked in that direction.
   Traffic on our road was rare. It was almost always one of the Jeters from across the way or one of the Tollivers east of us. Occasionally a strange car or truck would pass, and we’d watch it without a word until the dust had settled, then we’d talk about it over dinner and speculate as to who it was and what they were doing in our part of Craighead County. Pappy and my father would mention it at the Co-op, and my mother and Gran would tell all the ladies before Sunday school, and sooner or later they’d find someone else who’d seen the strange vehicle. Usually the mystery was solved, but occasionally one passed through and we never found out where it came from.
   This car moved slowly. I saw a hint of red that grew bigger and brighter, and before too long a shiny two-door sedan was turning into our driveway. The three of us were now standing on the porch, too surprised to move. The driver parked behind our pickup. From the front yard the Spruills were gawking, too.
   The driver opened his door and got out. Gran said, “Well, it’s Jimmy Dale.”
   “It certainly is,” my mother said, losing some of her anticipation.
   “Luke, run and get Pappy and your father,” Gran said. I sprinted through the house yelling for the men, but they’d heard the door slam and were coming from the backyard.
   We all met in front of the car, which was new and clean and undoubtedly the most beautiful vehicle I’d ever seen. Everybody hugged and shook hands and exchanged greetings, then Jimmy Dale introduced his new wife, a thin little thing who looked younger than Tally. Her name was Stacy. She was from Michigan, and when she spoke her words came through her nose. She clipped them quickly and efficiently, and within seconds she made my skin crawl.
   “Why does she talk like that?” I whispered to my mother as the group moved to the porch.
   “She’s a Yankee” was the simple explanation.
   Jimmy Dale’s father was Ernest Chandler, Pappy’s older brother. Ernest had farmed in Leachville until a heart attack killed him a few years earlier. I did not personally remember Ernest, or Jimmy Dale, though I’d heard plenty of stories about them. I knew that Jimmy Dale had fled the farm and migrated to Michigan, where he found a job in a Buick factory making three dollars an hour, an unbelievable wage by Black Oak standards. He’d helped other local boys get good jobs up there. Two years earlier, after another bad crop, my father had spent a miserable winter in Flint, putting windshields into new Buicks. He’d brought home a thousand dollars and had spent it all on outstanding farm debts.
   “That’s some car,” my father said as they sat on the front steps. Gran was in the kitchen making iced tea. My mother had the unpleasant task of chatting up Stacy, a misfit from the moment she stepped out of the car.
   “Brand new,” Jimmy Dale said proudly. “Got it last week, just in time to drive home. Me and Stacy here got married a month ago, and that’s our wedding present.”
   “Stacy and I got married, not me and Stacy,” said the new wife, cutting in from across the porch. There was a slight pause in the conversation as the rest of us absorbed the fact that Stacy had just corrected her husband’s grammar in the presence of others. I’d never heard this before in my life.
   “Is it a fifty-two?” Pappy asked.
   “No, it’s a fifty-three, newest thing on the road. Built it myself.”
   “You don’t say.”
   “Yep. Buick lets us custom order our own cars, then we get to watch when they come down the line. I put the dashboard in that one.”
   “How much did it cost?” I asked, and I thought my mother would come for my throat.
   “Luke!” she shouted. My father and Pappy cast hard looks at me, and I was about to say something when Jimmy Dale blurted out, “Twenty-seven hundred dollars. It’s no secret. Every dealer in the country knows how much they cost.”
   By now the Spruills had drifted over and were inspecting the carevery Spruill but Tally, who was nowhere to be seen. It was Sunday afternoon and time, in my way of thinking, for a cool bath at Siler’s Creek. I had been hanging around the porch waiting for her to appear.
   Trot waddled around the car while Bo and Dale circled it, too. Hank was peering inside, probably looking for the keys. Mr. and Mrs. Spruill were admiring it from a distance.
   Jimmy Dale watched them carefully. “Hill people?”
   “Yeah, they’re from Eureka Springs.”
   “Nice folks?”
   “For the most part,” Pappy said.
   “What’s that big one doin’?”
   “You never know.”
   We’d heard at church that morning that Samson had eventually gotten to his feet and walked from the ring, so Hank had not added another casualty to his list. Brother Akers had preached for an hour on the sinfulness of the carnival-wagering, fighting, lewdness, vulgar costumes, mingling with gypsies, all sorts of filth. Dewayne and I listened to every word, but our names were never mentioned.
   “Why do they live like that?” Stacy asked, looking at Camp Spruill. Her crisp words knifed through the air.
   “How else could they live?” Pappy asked. He, too, had already made the decision that he did not like the new Mrs. Jimmy Dale Chandler. She sat perched like a little bird on the edge of a rocker, looking down on everything around her.
   “Can’t you provide housing for them?” she asked.
   I could tell that Pappy was starting to burn.
   “Anyway, Buick’ll let us finance the cars for twenty-four months,” Jimmy Dale said.
   “Is that so?” said my father, still staring at it. “I think that’s ‘bout the finest car I’ve ever seen.”
   Gran brought a tray to the porch and served tall glasses of iced tea with sugar. Stacy declined. “Tea with ice,” she said. “Not for me. Do you have any hot tea?”
   Hot tea? Who’d ever heard of such foolishness?
   “No, we don’t drink hot tea around here,” Pappy said from his swing as he glared at Stacy.
   “Well, up in Michigan we don’t drink it with ice,” she said.
   “This ain’t Michigan,” Pappy shot back.
   “Would you like to see my garden?” my mother said abruptly.
   “Yeah, that’s a great idea,” Jimmy Dale said. “Go on, sweetheart, Kathleen has the prettiest garden in Arkansas.”
   “I’ll go with you,” Gran said in an effort to shove the girl off the porch and away from controversy. The three women disappeared, and Pappy waited just long enough to say, “Where in God’s name did you find her, Jimmy Dale?”
   “She’s a sweet girl, Uncle Eli,” he answered without much conviction.
   “She’s a damned Yankee.”
   “Yankees ain’t so bad. They were smart enough to avoid cotton. They live in nice houses with indoor plumbing and telephones and televisions. They make good money and they build good schools. Stacy’s had two years of college. Her family’s had a television for three years. Just last week I watched the Indians and Tigers on it. Can you believe that, Luke? Watching baseball on television.”
   “No sir.”
   “Well, I did. Bob Lemon pitched for the Indians. Tigers ain’t much; they’re in last place again.”
   “I don’t much care for the American League,” I said, repeating words I’d heard my father and grandfather say since the day I started remembering.
   “What a surprise,” Jimmy Dale said with a laugh. “Spoken like a true Cardinal fan. I was the same way till I went up North. I’ve been to eleven games this year in Tiger Stadium, and the American League kinda grows on you. Yankees were in town two weeks ago; place was sold out. They got this new guy, Mickey Mantle, ‘bout as smooth as I’ve seen. Good power, great speed, strikes out a lot, but when he hits it, it’s gone. He’ll be a great one. And they got Berra and Rizzuto.”
   “I still hate ‘em,” I said, and Jimmy Dale laughed again.
   “You still gonna play for the Cardinals?” he asked.
   “Yes sir.”
   “You ain’t gonna farm?”
   “No sir.”
   “Smart boy.”
   I’d heard the grown-ups talk about Jimmy Dale. He was quite smug that he’d managed to flee the cotton patch and make a better living up North. He liked to talk about his money. He’d found the better life and was quick with his advice to other farm boys around the county.
   Pappy thought that farming was the only honorable way a man should work, with the possible exception of playing professional baseball.
   We sipped our tea for a while, then Jimmy Dale said, “So how’s the cotton?”
   “So far so good,” Pappy said. “The first pickin’ went well.”
   “Now we’ll go through it again,” my father added. “Probably be done in a month or so.”
   Tally emerged from the depths of Camp Spruill, holding a towel or some type of cloth. She circled wide around the red car, where her family still stood entranced; they didn’t notice her. She looked at me from the distance but made no sign. I was suddenly bored with baseball and cotton and cars and such, but I couldn’t just race off. It would be rude to leave company in such a manner, and my father would suspect something. So I sat there and watched Tally disappear past the house.
   “How’s Luther?” my father asked.
   “Doin’ well,” Jimmy Dale said. “I got ‘im on at the plant. He’s makin’ three dollars an hour, forty hours a week. Luther ain’t never seen so much money.”
   Luther was another cousin, another Chandler from a distant strain. I’d met him once, at a funeral.
   “So he ain’t comin’ home?” Pappy said.
   “I doubt it.”
   “Is he gonna marry a Yankee?”
   “I ain’t asked him. I reckon he’ll do whatever he wants to do.”
   There was a pause, and the tension seemed to fade for a moment. Then Jimmy Dale said, “You can’t blame him for stayin’ up there. I mean, hell, they lost their farm. He was pickin’ cotton around here for other people, makin’ a thousand bucks a year, didn’t have two dimes to rub together. Now he’ll make more than six thousand a year, plus a bonus and retirement.”
   “Did he join the union?” my father asked.
   “Damned right he did. I got all the boys from here in the union.”
   “What’s a union?” I asked.
   “Luke, go check on your mother,” Pappy said. “Go on.”
   Once again I had asked an innocent question, and because of it, I was banished from the conversation. I left the porch, then raced to the back of the house in hopes of seeing Tally. But she was gone, no doubt down at the creek bathing without her faithful lookout.
   Gran was at the garden gate, resting on the fence, watching my mother and Stacy go from plant to plant. I stood beside her, and she tousled my hair. “Pappy said she’s a damned Yankee,” I said softly.
   “Don’t swear.”
   “I’m not swearin’. I’m just repeatin’.”
   “They’re good people, they’re just different.” Gran’s mind was somewhere else. At times that summer she would talk to me without seeing me. Her tired eyes would drift away as her thoughts left our farm.
   “Why does she talk like that?” I asked.
   “She thinks we talk funny.”
   “She does?”
   “Of course.”
   I couldn’t understand this.
   A green snake less than a foot long poked its head from the cucumber patch, then raced down a dirt trail directly at my mother and Stacy. They saw it at about the same instant. My mother pointed and calmly said, “There’s a little green snake.”
   Stacy reacted in a different manner. Her mouth flew open, but she was so horrified that it took a second or two for any sound to come forth. Then she let loose with a scream that the Latchers could’ve heard, a bloodcurdling shriek that was far more terrifying than even the deadliest of snakes.
   “A snake!” she screamed again as she jumped behind my mother. “Jimmy Dale! Jimmy Dale!”
   The snake had stopped dead on the trail and appeared to be looking up at her. It was just a harmless little green snake. How could anybody be afraid of it? I darted through the garden and picked him up, thinking I was helping matters. But the sight of a little boy holding such a lethal creature was more than Stacy could stand. She fainted and fell into the butter beans as the men came running from the front porch.
   Jimmy Dale scooped her up as we tried to explain what had happened. The poor snake was limp; I thought he’d fainted, too. Pappy could not suppress a grin as we followed Jimmy Dale and his wife to the back porch, where he laid her on a bench while Gran went to get remedies.
   Stacy came to eventually, her face pale, her skin clammy. Gran hovered over her with wet cloths and smelling salts.
   “Don’t they have snakes up in Michigan?” I whispered to my father.
   “Reckon not.”
   “It was just a little green one,” I said.
   “Thank God she didn’t see a rat snake. She’d be dead,” my father said.
   My mother boiled water and poured it into a cup with a tea bag. Stacy sat up and drank it, and for the first time in history hot tea was consumed on our farm. She wanted to be alone, so we returned to the front porch while she rested.
   Before long, the men were into the Buick. They had the hood up and were poking their heads around the engine. When no one was paying attention to me, I moved away from the porch and headed for the rear of the house, looking for Tally. I hid by the silo, in a favorite spot where I couldn’t be seen. I heard an engine start, a smooth powerful sound, and knew it wasn’t our old truck. They were going for a ride, and I heard my father call my name. But when I didn’t respond, they left.
   I gave up on Tally and walked back to the house. Stacy was sitting on a stool under a tree, looking forlornly across our fields, arms crossed as if she were very unhappy. The Buick was gone.
   “You didn’t go for a ride?” she asked me.
   “No ma’am.”
   “Why not?”
   “Just didn’t.”
   “Have you ever ridden in a car?” Her tone was mocking, so I started to lie.
   “No ma’am.”
   “How old are you?”
   “Seven.”
   “You’re seven years old, and you’ve never ridden in a car?”
   “No ma’am.”
   “Have you ever seen a television?”
   “No ma’am.”
   “Have you ever used a telephone?”
   “No ma’am.”
   “Unbelievable.” She shook her head in disgust, and I wished I’d stayed by the silo. “Do you go to school?”
   “Yes ma’am.”
   “Thank God for that. Can you read?”
   “Yes ma’am. I can write, too.”
   “Are you going to finish high school?”
   “Sure am.”
   “Did your father?”
   “He did.”
   “And your grandfather?”
   “No ma’am.”
   “I didn’t think so. Does anybody go to college around here?”
   “Not yet.”
   “What does that mean?”
   “My mother says I’m goin’ to college.”
   “I doubt it. How can you afford college?”
   “My mother says I’m goin’.”
   “You’ll grow up to be just another poor cotton farmer, like your father and grandfather.”
   “You don’t know that,” I said. She shook her head in total frustration.
   “I’ve had two years of college,” she said very proudly.
   It didn’t make you any smarter, I wanted to say. There was a long pause. I wanted to leave but wasn’t sure how to properly remove myself from the conversation. She sat perched on the stool, gazing into the distance, gathering more venom.
   “I just can’t believe how backward you people are,” she said.
   I studied my feet. With the exception of Hank Spruill, I had never met a person whom I disliked as much as Stacy. What would Ricky do? He’d probably cuss her, and since I couldn’t get by with that, I just decided to walk away.
   The Buick was returning, with my father at the wheel. He parked it, and all the adults got out. Jimmy Dale yelled for the Spruills to come over. He loaded up Bo, Dale, and Trot in the backseat, Hank in the front, and away they went, flying down our dirt road, headed for the river.
   It was late in the afternoon before Jimmy Dale made any mention of leaving. We were ready for them to go, and I was particularly worried that they might hang around long enough for supper. I couldn’t imagine sitting around the dinner table trying to eat while Stacy commented on our food and habits. So far she had despised everything else about our lives, why should she relent over supper?
   We moved slowly to the Buick, our languid good-byes taking forever, as usual.
   No one was ever in a hurry when it was time to go. The announcement was made that the hour was late, then repeated, and then someone made the first move to the car or truck amid the first wave of farewells. Hands were shaken, hugs given, promises exchanged. Progress was made until the group got to the vehicle, at which time the entire procession came to a halt as someone remembered yet another quick story. More hugs, more promises to come back soon. After considerable effort, the departing ones were safely tucked away inside the vehicle, then those sending them off would stick their heads in for another round of good-byes. Maybe another quick story. A few protests would finally get the engine started, and the car or truck would slowly back up, everyone still waving.
   When the house was out of sight, someone other than the driver would say, “What was the hurry?”
   And someone standing in the front yard, still waving, would say, “Wonder why they had to rush off?”
   When we made it to the car, Stacy whispered something to Jimmy Dale. He then turned to my mother and said softly, “She needs to go to the bathroom.”
   My mother looked worried. We didn’t have bathrooms. You relieved yourself in the outhouse, a small wooden closet sitting on a deep hole, hidden out behind the toolshed, halfway between the back porch and the barn.
   “Come with me,” my mother said to her, and they left. Jimmy Dale suddenly remembered another story, one about a local boy who went to Flint and got arrested for public drunkenness outside a bar. I eased away and walked through the house. Then I sneaked off the back porch and ran between two chicken coops to a point where I could see my mother leading Stacy to the outhouse. She stopped and looked at it and seemed very reluctant to enter. But she had no choice.
   My mother left her and retreated to the front yard.
   I struck quickly. As soon as my mother was out of range, I knocked on the door of the outhouse. I heard a faint shriek, then a desperate, “Who is it?”
   “Miss Stacy, it’s me, Luke.”
   “I’m in here!” she said, her usually clear words now hurried and muffled in the stifling humidity of the outhouse. It was dark in there, the only light coming from the tiny cracks between the planks.
   “Don’t come out right now!” I said with as much panic as I could fake.
   “What?”
   “There’s a big black snake out here!”
   “Oh my God!” she gasped. She would’ve fainted again, but she was already sitting down.
   “Be quiet!” I said. “Otherwise, he’ll know you’re in there.”
   “Holy Jesus!” she said, her voice breaking. “Do something!”
   “I can’t. He’s big, and he bites.”
   “What does he want?” she begged, as if she were on the verge of tears.
   “I don’t know. He’s a shitsnake, he hangs around here all the time.”
   “Get Jimmy Dale!”
   “Okay, but don’t come out. He’s right by the door. I think he knows you’re in there.”
   “Oh my God,” she said again, and started crying. I ducked back between the chicken coops, then looped around the garden on the east side of the house. I moved slowly and quietly along the hedges that were our property line until I came to a point in a thicket where I could hide and watch the front yard. Jimmy Dale was leaning on his car, telling a story, waiting for his young bride to finish her business.
   Time dragged on. My parents and Pappy and Gran listened and chuckled as one story led to another. Occasionally one of them would glance toward the backyard.
   My mother finally became concerned and left the group to check on Stacy. A minute later there were voices, and Jimmy Dale bolted toward the outhouse. I buried myself deeper in the thicket.

   It was almost dark when I entered the house. I’d been watching from a distance, from beyond the silo, and I knew my mother and Gran were preparing supper. I was in enough trouble-being late for a meal would have only compounded the situation.
   They were seated, and Pappy was about to bless the food when I walked through the door from the back porch and quietly took my seat. They looked at me, but I chose instead to stare at my plate. Pappy said a quick prayer, and the food was passed around. After a silence sufficiently long enough to build tension, my father said, “Where you been, Luke?”
   “Down by the creek,” I said.
   “Doin’ what?”
   “Nothin’. Just lookin’ around.”
   This sounded suspicious enough, but they let it pass. When all was quiet, Pappy, with perfect timing and with the devil in his voice, said, “You see any shitsnakes at the creek?”
   He barely got the words out before he cracked up.
   I looked around the table. Gran’s jaws were clenched as if she were determined not to smile. My mother covered her mouth with her napkin, but her eyes betrayed her; she wanted to laugh, too. My father had a large bite of something in his mouth, and he managed to chew it while keeping a straight face.
   But Pappy was determined to howl. He roared at the end of the table while the rest of them fought to maintain their composure. “That was a good one, Luke!” he managed to say while catching his breath. “Served her right.”
   I finally laughed, too, but not at my own actions. The sight of Pappy laughing so hard while the other three so gamely tried not to struck me as funny.
   “That’s enough, Eli,” Gran said, finally moving her jaws.
   I took a large bite of peas and stared at my plate. Things grew quiet again, and we ate for a while with nothing said.

   After dinner, my father took me for a walk to the tool shed. On its door he kept a wooden hickory stick, one that he’d cut himself and polished to a shine. It was reserved for me.
   I’d been taught to take my punishment like a man. Crying was forbidden, at least openly. In these awful moments, Ricky always inspired me. I’d heard horror stories of the beatings Pappy had given him, and never, according to his parents and mine, had he been brought to tears. When Ricky was a kid, a whipping was a challenge.
   “That was a mean thing you did to Stacy,” my father began. “She was a guest on our farm, and she’s married to your cousin.”
   “Yes sir.”
   “Why’d you do it?”
   “ ‘Cause she said we were stupid and backward.” A little embellishment here wouldn’t hurt.
   “She did?”
   “Yes sir. I didn’t like her, neither did you or anybody else.”
   “That may be true, but you still have to respect your elders. How many licks you think that’s worth?” The crime and the punishment were always discussed beforehand. When I bent over, I knew exactly how many licks I’d receive.
   “One,” I said. That was my usual assessment.
   “I think two,” he said. “Now what about the bad language?”
   “I don’t think it was that bad,” I said.
   “You used a word that was unacceptable.”
   “Yes sir.”
   “How many licks for that?”
   “One.”
   “Can we agree on three, total?” he asked. He never whipped me when he was angry, so there was usually a little room for negotiation. Three sounded fair, but I always pushed a little. After all, I was on the receiving end. Why not haggle?
   “Two’s more fair,” I said.
   “It’s three. Now bend over.”
   I swallowed hard, gritted my teeth, turned around, bent over, and grabbed my ankles. He smacked my rear three times with the hickory stick. It stung like hell, but his heart wasn’t in it. I’d received far worse.
   “Go to bed, right now,” he said, and I ran to the house.