Chapter 20

   Now that Hank had $250 of Samson’s money in his pocket, he was even less enthusiastic about picking cotton. “Where’s Hank?” Pappy asked Mr. Spruill as we took the sacks and began our work on Monday morning. “Sleepin’, I reckon” was the abrupt response, and nothing else was said at that moment.
   He arrived in the fields sometime in the middle of the morning. I didn’t know exactly when because I was at the far end of a row of cotton, but soon I heard voices and knew that the Spruills were once again at war.
   An hour or so before lunch, the sky began to darken, and a slight breeze came from the west. When the sun disappeared, I stopped picking and studied the clouds. A hundred yards away I saw Pappy do the same thing-hands on hips, straw hat cocked to one side, face frowning upward. The wind grew stronger and the sky darker, and before long the heat was gone. All of our storms came from Jonesboro, which was known as Tornado Alley.
   Hail hit first, hard tiny specks the size of pea gravel, and I headed for the tractor. The sky to the southwest was dark blue, almost black, and the low clouds were bearing down on us. The Spruills were moving quickly down their rows, all heading for the trailer. The Mexicans were running toward the barn.
   I began to run, too. The hail stung the back of my neck and prompted me to run even faster. The wind was howling through the trees along the river and pushing the cotton stalks to their sides. Lightning cracked somewhere behind me, and I heard one of the Spruills, Bo, probably, give a yell.
   “We don’t need to get near the cotton trailer,” Pappy was saying as I arrived. “Not with that lightnin’.”
   “Better get to the house,” my father said.
   We loaded onto the flatbed trailer, all of us scrambling in a great hurry, and just as Pappy turned the tractor around, the rain hit with a fury. It was cold and sharp and falling sideways in the fierce wind. We were instantly soaked; I wouldn’t have been wetter if I’d jumped in the creek.
   The Spruills huddled together with Tally in the center. Just a few feet away, my father clutched me to his chest, as if the wind might take me away. My mother and Gran had left the fields not long before the storm hit.
   The rain beat us in waves. It was so thick I could barely see the rows of cotton just a few feet in front of me. “Hurry up, Pappy!” I kept saying. The storm was so loud I couldn’t hear the familiar knock of the tractor engine. Lightning cracked again, this time much closer, so close that my ears hurt. I thought we were going to die.
   It took forever to get to the house, but when we did, the rain suddenly stopped. The sky was even darker, black in every direction. “It’s a funnel!” Mr. Spruill said loudly as we were just getting off the trailer. To the west, far beyond the river and high above the tree line, a slim funnel cloud dipped downward. It was light gray, almost white against the black sky, and it grew larger and louder as it made its way very slowly toward the ground. It was several miles away, and because of the distance it didn’t seem too dangerous.
   Tornadoes were common in our part of Arkansas, and I’d heard stories about them all of my life. Decades earlier Gran’s father had supposedly survived a horrible twister, one that had run in circles and struck the same small farm more than once. It was a tall tale, one that Gran told without much conviction. Twisters were a way of life, but I’d not seen one until now.
   “Kathleen!” my father yelled toward the house. He didn’t want my mother to miss such a spectacle. I glanced at the barn, where the Mexicans were as still and as amazed as we were. A couple of them were pointing.
   We watched the funnel in muted fascination, without fear or terror, because it was nowhere near our farm and going away, to the north and east. It moved slowly, as if it were searching for the perfect place to touch down. Its tail was clearly visible above the horizon, way above the land, and it skipped along in midair, dancing at times while it decided where and when to strike. The bulk of the funnel spun tightly, a perfect upside-down cone whirling in a fierce spiral.
   The screen door slammed behind us. My mother and Gran were on the steps, both of them wiping their hands with dish towels.
   “It’s headed for town,” Pappy said with great authority, as if he could predict where tornadoes would hit.
   “I think so,” my father added, suddenly another expert weatherman.
   The twister’s tail sank lower and stopped skipping. It appeared as if it had indeed touched down somewhere far away, because we could no longer see the end of it.
   The church, the gin, the movie theater, Pop and Pearl’s grocery– I was tallying the damage when suddenly the twister lifted itself up and seemed to disappear completely.
   There was another roar behind us. Across the road, deep into the Jeter property, another tornado had arrived. It had crept up on us while we were watching the first one. It was a mile or two away and seemed headed straight for our house. We watched in horror, unable to move for a second or two.
   “Let’s get in the barn!” Pappy shouted. Some of the Spruills were already running toward their camp, as if they’d be safe inside a tent.
   “Over here!” Mr. Spruill shouted and pointed to the barn. Suddenly everyone was yelling and pointing and scurrying about. My father grabbed my hand, and we began running. The ground was shaking and the wind was screaming. The Mexicans were scattering in all directions; some thought it best to hide in the fields, others were headed toward our house until they saw us running to the barn. Hank flew past me with Trot on his back. Tally outran us, too.
   Before we made it to the barn, the twister left the ground and rose quickly into the sky. Pappy stopped and watched, and then so did everybody else. The funnel went slightly to the east of our farm, and instead of a frontal assault, it left behind only a sprinkling of thick brown rainwater and specks of mud. We watched it jump along in midair, looking for another site to drop down in, just like the first one.
   For a few minutes we were too stunned and too frightened to say much.
   I studied the clouds in all directions, determined not to be blind-sided again. I wasn’t the only one cutting my eyes around.
   Then it started raining once more, and we went to the house.

   The storm raged for two hours and threw almost everything in nature’s arsenal at us: gale-force winds and blinding rains, twisters, hail, and lightning so quick and so close that we hid under our beds at times. The Spruills took refuge in our living room, while we cowered throughout the rest of the house. My mother kept me close. She was deathly afraid of storms and that made the entire ordeal even worse. I wasn’t exactly sure how we would die-blown away by the wind or seared by a lightning bolt or swept away by the water-but it was obvious to me that the end had come. My father slept through most of it, though, and his indifference was a great comfort. He’d lived in foxholes and been shot at by the Germans, so nothing frightened him. The three of us lay on the floor of their bedroom-my father snoring, my mother praying, and me in the middle listening to the sounds of the storm. I thought of Noah and his forty days of rain, and I waited for our little house to simply lift up and begin floating.

   When the rain and wind finally passed, we went outside to survey the destruction. Other than wet cotton, there was surprisingly little damage-several scattered tree branches, the usual washed-out gullies, and some ripped-up tomato plants in the garden. The cotton would be dry by the next morning, and we’d be back in business.
   During a late lunch Pappy said, “I reckon I better go check on the gin.” We were anxious to get to town. What if it had been leveled by the twister?
   “I’d like to see the church,” Gran said.
   “Me, too,” I said.
   “Why do you wanna see the church?” my father asked.
   “To see if the twister got it.”
   “Let’s go,” Pappy said, and we jumped from our chairs. The dishes were piled into the sink and left unwashed, something I’d never seen before.
   Our road was nothing but mud, and in places large sections had been washed away. We slipped and slid for a quarter of a mile until we came to a crater. Pappy rammed it in low and tried to plow through the ditch on the left side, next to the Jeters’ cotton. The truck stopped and settled, and we were hopelessly stuck. My father hiked back to the house to get the John Deere while we waited. As usual, I was in the back of the truck, and so I had plenty of room to move around. My mother was packed in the front with Pappy and Gran. I think it was Gran who said something to the effect that perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea to go to town after all. Pappy just stewed.
   When my father returned, he hooked a twenty-foot log chain to the front bumper and slowly pulled us out of the ditch. The men had decided it was best for the tractor to drag us all the way to the bridge. When we got there, Pappy unhitched the chain, and my father rode over on the tractor. Then we crossed in the truck. The road on the other side was even worse, according to the men, so they rehitched the chain, and the tractor pulled the truck for two miles until we came to a gravel road. We left the John Deere there and headed for town, if, in fact, it was still there. God only knew what carnage awaited us. I could barely conceal my excitement.
   We finally made it to the highway, and when we turned toward Black Oak, we left a long trail of mud on the asphalt. Why couldn’t all roads be paved? I asked myself.
   Things appeared normal as we drove along. No flattened trees or crops, no debris slung for miles, no gaping holes through the landscape. All the houses seemed to be in order. The fields were empty because the cotton was wet, but other than that, life had not been disturbed.
   Standing in the back of the truck, looking over the cab with my father, I strained my eyes for the first glimpse of town. It arrived soon enough. The gin was roaring as usual. God had protected the church. The stores along Main Street were intact. “Thank God,” my father said. I was not unhappy to see the buildings untouched, but things could’ve been more interesting.
   We weren’t the only curious ones. Traffic was heavy on Main Street, and people crowded the sidewalks. This was unheard of for a Monday. We parked at the church, and once we determined that it had not been hit, I scampered down to Pop and Pearl’s, where the foot traffic appeared to be particularly thick. Mr. Red Fletcher had a group going, and I got there just in time.
   According to Mr. Red, who lived west of town, he had known a twister was about to appear because his old beagle was hiding under the kitchen table, a most ominous sign. Taking his cue from his dog, Mr. Red began studying the sky, and before long was not surprised to see it turn black. He heard the twister before he saw it. It dipped down from nowhere, came straight for his farm, and stayed on the ground long enough to flatten two chicken coops and peel the roof off his house. A piece of glass struck his wife and drew blood, so we had a bona fide casualty. Behind me I heard folks whisper excitedly about driving out to the Fletcher place to inspect the destruction.
   “What’d it look like?” somebody asked.
   “Black as coal,” Mr. Red said. “Sounded like a freight train.”
   This was even more exciting because our twisters had been a light gray in color, almost white. His had been black. Apparently, all manner of tornadoes had ravaged our county.
   Mrs. Fletcher appeared at his side, her arm heavily bandaged and in a sling, and we couldn’t help but stare. She looked as though she might just pass out on the sidewalk. She displayed her wound and received plenty of attention until Mr. Red realized he’d lost the audience, so he stepped forward and resumed his narrative. He said his tornado left the ground and began hopping about. He jumped in his truck and tried to follow it. He gave it a good chase through a driving hailstorm and almost caught up with it as it circled back.
   Mr. Red’s truck was older than Pappy’s. Some of those in the crowd began looking around in disbelief. I wanted one of the adults to ask, “What were you gonna do if you caught it, Red?” Anyway, he said he soon gave up the chase and returned home to see about Mrs. Fletcher. When he had seen it last, his tornado was headed straight for town.
   Pappy told me later that Mr. Red Fletcher would tell a lie when the truth sounded better.
   There was a lot of lying that afternoon in Black Oak, or perhaps just a lot of exaggerating. Twister stories were told and retold from one end of Main Street to the other. In front of the Co-op, Pappy described what we’d seen, and for the most part he stuck to the facts. The double-twister story carried the moment and had everyone’s attention until Mr. Dutch Lamb stepped forward and claimed to have seen three! His wife verified it, and Pappy went to the truck.
   By the time we left town, it was a miracle that hundreds hadn’t been killed.
   The last of the clouds were gone by dark, but the heat did not return. We sat on the porch after supper and waited for the Cardinals. The air was clear and light-the first hint of autumn.
   Six games were left, three against the Reds and three against the Cubs, all to be played at home at Sportsman’s Park, but with the Dodgers seven games in first place, the season was over. Stan the Man Musial was leading the league in batting and slugging, and he also had more hits and doubles than anybody else. The Cardinals would not win the pennant, but we still had the greatest player in the game. At home after a road trip to Chicago, the boys were happy to be back in St. Louis, according to Harry Caray, who often passed along greetings and gossip as if all the players lived in his house.
   Musial hit a single and a triple, and the score was tied at three after nine innings. It was late, but we weren’t tired. The storm had chased us from the fields, and the cool weather was something to be savored. The Spruills were sitting around a fire, talking softly and enjoying a moment without Hank. He often disappeared after supper.
   In the bottom of the tenth, Red Schoendienst singled, and when Stan Musial came to the plate, the fans went wild, according to Harry Caray, who, as Pappy said, often watched one game and described another. The attendance was fewer than ten thousand; we could tell the crowd was slim. But Harry was making enough noise for the other twenty thousand. After 148 games, he was just as excited as he’d been on opening day. Musial ripped a double, his third hit of the game, scoring Schoendienst and winning it four to three.
   A month earlier we would have celebrated, along with Harry, on the front porch. I would have sprinted around the bases in the yard, sliding into second, just like Stan the Man. Such a dramatic victory would have sent us all to bed happy, though Pappy would still want to fire the manager.
   But things were different now. The win meant little; the season was ending with the Cardinals in third place. The front yard had been overwhelmed by the Spruills. Summer was gone.
   Pappy turned off the radio with Harry winding down. “There’s no way Baumholtz can catch him,” Pappy said. Frankie Baumholtz of the Cubs was six points behind Musial in the race for the hitting title.
   My father grunted his agreement. The men had been quieter than usual during the game. The storms and cool weather had struck them like an illness. The seasons were changing, yet nearly one third of the cotton was still out there. We’d had near perfect weather for seven months; surely it was time for a change.

Chapter 21

   Autumn lasted less than twenty-four hours. By noon the next day the heat was back, the cotton was dry, the ground was hard, and all those pleasant thoughts about cool days and blowing leaves were forgotten. We had returned to the edge of the river for the second picking. A third one might materialize later in the fall, a “Christmas picking,” as it was known, in which the last remnants of cotton were gathered. By then the hill people and the Mexicans would be long gone.
   I stayed close to Tally for most of the day and worked hard to keep up with her. She had become aloof for some reason, and I was desperate to learn why. The Spruills were a tense bunch, no more singing or laughing in the fields, very few words spoken among them. Hank came to work mid-morning and began picking at a leisurely pace. The rest of the Spruills seemed to avoid him.
   Late in the afternoon I dragged myself back to the trailer-for the final time, I hoped. It was an hour before quitting time, and I was looking for my mother. Instead I saw Hank with Bo and Dale at the opposite end of the trailer, waiting in the shade for either Pappy or my father to weigh their cotton. I ducked low in the stalks so they wouldn’t see me and waited for friendlier voices.
   Hank was talking loudly, as usual. “I’m tired of pickin’ cotton,” he said. “Damned tired of it! So I been thinkin’ about a new job, and I done figured a new way to make money. Lots of it. I’m gonna follow that carnival around, go from town to town, sorta hide in the shadows while ol’ Samson and his woman rake in the cash. I’ll wait till the money piles up; I’ll watch him fling them little sodbusters outta the ring, and then late at night, when he’s good and tired, I’ll jump up outta nowhere, lay down fifty bucks, whip his ass again, and walk away with all his money. If I do it once a week, that’s two thousand dollars a month, twenty-four thousand bucks a year. All cash. Hell, I’ll get rich.”
   There was mischief in his voice, and Bo and Dale were laughing by the time he finished. Even I had to admit it was funny.
   “What if Samson gets tired of it?” Bo asked.
   “Are you kiddin’? He’s the world’s greatest wrestler, straight from Egypt. Samson fears no man. Hell, I might take his woman, too. She looked pretty good, didn’t she?”
   “You’ll have to let him win every now and then,” Bo said. “Otherwise he won’t fight you.”
   “I like the part about takin’ his woman,” Dale said. “I really liked her legs.”
   “Rest of her wasn’t bad,” Hank said. “Wait-I got it! I’ll run ‘im off and become the new Samson! I’ll grow my hair down to my ass, dye it black, get me some little leopard-skin shorts, talk real funny, and these ignorant rednecks ‘round here’ll think I’m from Egypt, too. Delilah won’t be able to keep her hands off me.”
   They laughed hard and long, and their amusement was contagious. I chuckled to myself at the notion of Hank strutting around the ring in tight shorts, trying to convince people he was from Egypt. But he was too stupid to be a showman. He would hurt people and scare away his challengers.
   Pappy arrived at the trailer and started weighing the cotton. My mother drifted in, too, and whispered to me that she was ready to go to the house. So was I. We made the long walk together, in silence, both happy that the day was almost over.

   The house painting had resumed. We noticed it from the garden, and upon closer inspection saw where our painter-Trot, we still presumed-had worked his way up to the fifth board from the bottom and had applied the first coat to an area about the size of a small window. My mother touched it gently; the paint stuck to her finger.
   “It’s fresh,” she said, glancing toward the front yard, where, as usual, there was no sign of Trot.
   “You still think it’s him?” I asked.
   “Yes, I do.”
   “Where does he get the paint?”
   “Tally buys it for him, out of her pickin’ money.”
   “Who told you?”
   “I asked Mrs. Foley at the hardware store. She said a crippled boy from the hills and his sister bought two quarts of white enamel house paint and a small brush. She thought it was strange-hill people buyin’ house paint.”
   “How much will two quarts paint?”
   “Not very much.”
   “You gonna tell Pappy?”
   “I am.”
   We made a quick pass through the garden, gathering just the essentials-tomatoes, cucumbers, and two red peppers that caught her eye. The rest of the picking crew would be in from the fields in a short while, and I was anxious for the fireworks to start once Pappy learned that his house was getting painted.
   In a few minutes, there were whispers and brief conversations outside. I was forced to slice cucumbers in the kitchen, a tactic to keep me away from the controversy. Gran listened to the news on the radio while my mother cooked. At some point, my father and Pappy walked to the east side of the house and inspected Trot’s work in progress.
   Then they came to the kitchen, where we sat and blessed the food and began eating without a word about anything but the weather. If Pappy was angry about the house painting, he certainly didn’t show it. Maybe he was just too tired.
   The next day my mother kept me behind and puttered around the house for as long as she could. She did the breakfast dishes and some laundry, and together we watched the front yard. Gran left and headed for the cotton, but my mother and I stayed back, doing chores and keeping busy.
   Trot was not to be seen. He’d vanished from the front yard. Hank stumbled from a tent around eight and knocked over cans and jugs until he found the leftover biscuits. He ate until there was nothing left, then he belched and looked at our house as if he might raid it for food. Eventually he lumbered past the silo on his way to the cotton trailer.
   We waited, peeking through the front windows. Still no sign of Trot. We finally gave up and walked to the fields. When my mother returned three hours later to prepare lunch, there was a small area of fresh paint on some boards under the window of my room. Trot was painting slowly toward the rear of the house, his work limited by his reach and by his desire for privacy. At the current rate of progress, he’d finish about half the east side before it was time for the Spruills to pack up and head for the hills.

   After three days of peace and hard work, it was time for more conflict. Miguel met Pappy at the tractor after breakfast, and they walked in the direction of the barn, where some of the other Mexicans were waiting. In the semidarkness of the dawn I tagged along, just close enough to hear but not get noticed. Luis was sitting on a stump, his head low as if he were sick. Pappy examined him closely. He had suffered some type of injury.
   The story, as Miguel explained it in rapid, broken English, was that during the night someone had thrown clods of dirt at the barn. The first one landed against the side of the hayloft just after the Mexicans had bedded down. It sounded like a gunshot-planks rattled, and the whole barn seemed to shake. A few minutes passed, and then another one landed. Then another. About ten minutes went by, and they thought perhaps it was over, but yet another one hit, this one on the tin roof just above their heads. They were angry and scared, and sleep became impossible. Through the cracks in the wall, they watched the cotton field behind the barn. Their tormentor was out there somewhere, deep in the cotton, invisible in the blackness of the night, hiding like a coward.
   Luis had slowly opened the loft door for a better look, and when he did a missile landed squarely in his face. It was a rock from the road in front of our house. Whoever threw it had saved it for such an occasion, a direct shot at one of the Mexicans. Dirt clods were fine for making noise, but the rock was used to maim.
   Luis’s nose was cut, broken, and swollen to twice its normal size. Pappy yelled for my father to fetch Gran.
   Miguel continued the story. Once they tended to Luis and got him somewhat comfortable, the shelling resumed. Every ten minutes or so, just as they were settling down again, another volley would crash in from the darkness. They watched carefully through the cracks but saw no movements in the field. It was just too dark to see anything. Finally their assailant grew tired of his fun and games and stopped the assault. For most of them, sleep had been fitful.
   Gran arrived and took over. Pappy stomped away, cursing under his breath. I was torn between the two dramas: Did I want to watch Gran doctor on Luis, or did I want to listen as Pappy blew off steam?
   I followed Pappy back to the tractor, where he growled at my father in words I could not understand. Then he charged the flatbed trailer where the Spruills were waiting, still half-asleep.
   “Where’s Hank?” he snarled at Mr. Spruill.
   “Sleepin’, I reckon.”
   “Is he gonna work today?” Pappy’s words were sharp.
   “Go ask him,” Mr. Spruill said, getting to his feet to address Pappy face-to-face.
   Pappy took a step closer. “The Mexicans couldn’t sleep last night ‘cause somebody’s throwin’ dirt clods against the barn. Any idea who it was?”
   My father, with a much cooler head, stepped between the two.
   “Nope. You accusin’ somebody?” Mr. Spruill asked.
   “I don’t know,” Pappy said. “Ever’body else’s workin’ hard, sleepin’ hard, dead tired at night. Ever’body but Hank. Seems to me, he’s the only one with plenty of time on his hands. And it’s the sorta stupid thing Hank would do.”
   I didn’t like this open conflict with the Spruills. They were as tired of Hank as we were, but they were still his family. And they were hill people, too-make them mad and they’d simply leave. Pappy was on the verge of saying too much.
   “I’ll speak to him,” Mr. Spruill said, somewhat softer, as if he knew Hank was the likely culprit. His chin dropped an inch or two, and he looked at Mrs. Spruill. The family was in turmoil because of Hank, and they were not ready to defend him.
   “Let’s get to work,” my father said. They were anxious for the confrontation to end. I glanced at Tally, but she was looking away, lost in her thoughts, ignoring me and everybody else. Pappy climbed onto the tractor, and we left to pick cotton.
   Luis lay on the back porch all morning with an ice pack on his face. Gran buzzed around and tried repeatedly to force her remedies upon him, but Luis held firm. By noon he’d had enough of this American style of doctoring and was anxious to return to the fields, broken nose or not.

   Hank’s cotton production had fallen from about four hundred pounds a day to less than two hundred. Pappy was livid about this. As the days dragged on, the situation festered, and there were more whispers among the adults. Pappy had never owned $250 free and clear.
   “How much did he pick today?” he asked my father over supper. We had just finished the blessing and were passing around the food.
   “Hundred and ninety pounds.”
   My mother closed her eyes in frustration. Supper was supposed to be a pleasant time for families to visit and reflect. She hated controversy during our meals. Idle gossip-chitchat about the goings-on of people we knew or perhaps didn’t know-was okay, but she didn’t like conflict. Food was not properly digested unless your body was relaxed.
   “I’ve a good mind to drive to town tomorrow, find Stick Powers, and tell him I’m finished with the boy,” Pappy said, waving a fork at the air.
   There was no way he would do this, and we knew it. He knew it, too. If Stick somehow managed to get Hank Spruill handcuffed and shoved into the back of his patrol car, which was a showdown I would’ve loved to witness, the rest of the Spruills would be packed and gone in a matter of minutes. Pappy wasn’t about to risk a crop over an idiot like Hank. We’d grit our teeth and just try to survive his presence on our farm. We’d hope and pray he wouldn’t kill anyone else and that no one killed him, and in a few short weeks the harvest would be completed, and he’d be gone.
   “You’re not sure it’s him,” Gran said. “No one saw him throwin’ at the barn.”
   “Some things you ain’t gotta see,” Pappy fired back. “We ain’t seen Trot with a paintbrush, but we’re perfectly happy to believe he’s doin’ the paintin’. Right?”
   My mother, with perfect timing, said, “Luke, who are the Cardinals playin’?” It was her standard line, a not-too-subtle way of letting the others know that she wanted to eat in peace.
   “The Cubs,” I said.
   “How many more games?” she asked.
   “Just three.”
   “How far ahead is Musial?”
   “Six points. He’s at three-thirty-six. Baumholtz is at three-thirty. He can’t catch him.”
   At this point my father was always expected to come to the aid of his wife and keep the conversation away from heavier matters. He cleared his throat and said, “I bumped into Lou Jeffcoat last Saturday-I forgot to tell you. He said the Methodists have a new pitcher for Sunday’s game.”
   Pappy had cooled off enough to say, “He’s lyin’. That’s what they say every year.”
   “Why would they need a new pitcher?” Gran asked with a faint smile, and I thought my mother was going to laugh.
   Sunday was the Fall Picnic, a glorious event that engulfed Black Oak. After worship, usually a very long worship, at least for us Baptists, we would meet at the school, where the Methodists would be gathering. Under the shade trees the ladies would set up enough food to feed the entire state, and after a long lunch the men would play a baseball game.
   It was no ordinary game, because bragging rights were at stake. The winners ribbed the losers for an entire year. In the dead of winter I had heard men at the Tea Shoppe ride each other about The Game.
   The Methodists had won it for the last four years, yet they always started rumors about having a new pitcher.
   “Who’s pitchin’ for us?” my father asked. Pappy coached the Baptist team every year, though after four straight losses, folks were beginning to grumble.
   “Ridley, I guess,” Pappy said without hesitation. He’d been thinking about the game for a year.
   “I can hit Ridley!” I said.
   “You got a better idea?” Pappy shot at me.
   “Yes sir.”
   “Well, I can’t wait to hear it.”
   “Pitch Cowboy,” I said, and everybody smiled. What a wonderful idea.
   But the Mexicans couldn’t play in The Game, nor could the hill people. Each roster was made up of certified church members onlyno farm laborers, no relatives from Jonesboro, no ringers of any variety. There were so many rules that if they’d been put down in writing, the rule book would’ve been thicker than the Bible. The umpires were brought in from Monette and were paid five dollars a game plus all the lunch they could eat. Supposedly, no one knew the umpires, but after last year’s loss there were rumors, at least around our church, that they were either Methodists or married to Methodists.
   “That would be nice, wouldn’t it?” my father said, dreaming of Cowboy mowing down our rivals. One strikeout after another. Curve-balls dropping in from all directions.
   With the conversation back in pleasant territory, the women took over. Baseball was pushed aside as they talked about the picnic, the food, what the Methodist women would be wearing, and so on. Supper came to the usual quiet close, and we headed for the porch.

   I had decided that I would write Ricky a letter and tell him about Libby Latcher. I was certain that none of the adults would do so; they were too busy burying the secret. But Ricky needed to know what Libby had accused him of. He needed to respond in some way. If he knew what was happening, then maybe he could get himself sent home to deal with the situation. And the sooner the better. The Latchers were staying to themselves, telling no one, as far as we knew, but secrets were hard to keep around Black Oak.
   Before Ricky left for Korea, he’d told us the story of a friend of his, a guy from Texas he’d met in boot camp. This guy was only eighteen, but he was already married, and his wife was pregnant. The army sent him to California to shuffle papers for a few months so he wouldn’t get shot. It was a hardship case of some variety, and the guy would be back in Texas before his wife gave birth.
   Ricky now had a hardship; he just didn’t know it. I would be the one to tell him. I excused myself from the porch under the pretense of fatigue and went to Ricky’s room, where I kept my Big Chief writing tablet. I took it to the kitchen table-the light was better thereand began writing slowly in large printed letters.
   I dwelt briefly on baseball, the pennant race, then the carnival and Samson, and I wrote a couple of sentences about the twisters earlier in the week. I had neither the time nor the stomach to talk about Hank, so I got to the meat of the story. I told him that Libby Latcher had had a baby, though I did not confess that I had actually been nearby when the thing arrived.
   My mother wandered in from the porch and asked what I was doing. “Writin’ Ricky,” I said.
   “How nice,” she said. “You need to go to bed.”
   “Yes ma’am.” I had written a full page and was quite proud of myself. Tomorrow I would write another page. Then maybe another. I was determined that it would be the longest letter Ricky had so far received.

Chapter 22

   I was nearing the end of a long row of cotton, close to the thicket that bordered Siler’s Creek, when I heard voices. The stalks were especially tall, and I was lost amid the dense foliage. My sack was half-full, and I was dreaming of the afternoon in town, of a movie at the Dixie with a Coca-Cola and popcorn. The sun was almost overhead; it had to be approaching noon. I planned to make the turn and then head back to the trailer, working hard and finishing the day with a flourish.
   When I heard people talking, I dropped to one knee, and then I slowly sat on the ground without making another sound. For a long time I heard nothing at all, and I was beginning to think that maybe I had been wrong, when the voice of a girl barely made it through the stalks to where I was hiding. She was somewhere to my right; I couldn’t tell how far away.
   I slowly stood and peeked through the cotton but saw nothing. Then I crouched again and began creeping down the row toward the end, my cotton sack abandoned for the moment. Silently, I crawled and stopped, crawled and stopped, until I heard her again. She was several rows over, hiding, I thought, in the cotton. I froze for a few minutes until I heard her laugh, a soft laugh that was muffled by the cotton, and I knew it was Tally.
   For a long time I rocked gently on all fours and tried to imagine what she was doing hiding in the fields, as far away from the cotton trailer as possible. Then I heard another voice, that of a man. I decided to move in closer.
   I found the widest gap between two stalks and cut through the first row without a sound. There was no wind to rustle the leaves and bolls, so I had to be perfectly still. And patient. Then I made it through the second row and waited for the voices.
   They were quiet for a long time, and I began to worry that maybe they’d heard me. Then there was giggling, both voices working at once, and low, hushed conversation that I could barely hear. I stretched out flat on my stomach and surveyed the situation from the ground, down where the stalks were thickest and there were no bolls and leaves. I could almost see something several rows away, maybe the darkness of Tally’s hair, maybe not. I decided I was close enough.
   There was no one nearby. The others-the Spruills and the Chandlers-were working their way back to the trailer. The Mexicans were far away, nothing visible but their straw hats.
   Though shaded, I was sweating profusely. My heart was racing, my mouth dry. Tally was hiding deep in the cotton with a man, doing something bad, or if not, then why was she hiding? I wanted to do something to stop them, but I had no right. I was just a little kid, a spy who was trespassing on their business. I thought about retreating, but the voices held me.
   The snake was a water moccasin, a cottonmouth, one of many in our part of Arkansas. They lived around the creeks and rivers and occasionally ventured inland to sun or to feed. Each spring when we planted, it was common to see them ground up behind our disks and plows. They were short, black, thick, aggressive, and filled with venom. Their bites were rarely fatal, but I’d heard many tall tales of horrible deaths.
   If you saw one, you simply killed it with a stick or a hoe or anything you could grab. They weren’t as quick as rattlers, nor did they have the striking range, but they were mean and nasty.
   This one was crawling down the row directly at me, less than five feet away. We were eyeball-to-eyeball. I’d been so occupied with Tally and whatever she was doing that I’d forgotten everything else. I uttered something in horror and bolted upright, then I ran through a row of cotton, then another.
   A man said something in a louder voice, but for the moment I was more concerned with the snake. I hit the ground near my cotton sack, strapped it over my shoulder, and began crawling toward the trailer. When I was certain the cottonmouth was far away, I stopped and listened. Nothing. Complete silence. No one was chasing me.
   Slowly, I stood and peeked through the cotton. To my right, several rows away and already with her back to me, was Tally, her cotton sack strapped over her shoulder and her straw hat cocked to one side, steadily making her way along as if nothing had happened.
   And to my left, cutting low through the cotton and escaping like a thief, was Cowboy.

   On most Saturday afternoons Pappy could find some reason to delay our trip to town. We’d finish lunch, and I’d suffer the indignity of the bath, then he’d find something to do because he was determined to make us wait. The tractor had some ailment that suddenly needed his attention. He’d crawl around with his old wrenches, making a fuss about how it had to be repaired right then so he could buy the necessary parts in town. Or the truck wasn’t running just right, and Saturday after lunch was the perfect time to poke around the engine. Or the water pump needed his attention. Sometimes he sat at the kitchen table and attended to the small amount of paperwork it took to run the farming operation.
   Finally, when everyone was good and mad, he’d take a long bath, and then we’d head to town.
   My mother was anxious to see the newest member of Craighead County, even though he was a Latcher, so while Pappy piddled in the tool shed, we loaded four boxes of vegetables and headed across the river. My father somehow avoided the trip. The baby’s alleged father was his brother, and that, of course, made my father the baby’s alleged uncle, and that was something my father simply wasn’t ready to accept. And I was sure he had no interest in another encounter with Mr. Latcher.
   My mother drove, and I prayed, and we somehow made it safely over the bridge. We rolled to a stop on the other side of the river. The truck stalled, and the engine died. As she was taking a deep breath, I decided to say, “Mom, there’s somethin’ I need to tell you.”
   “Can it wait?” she asked, reaching for the ignition.
   “No.”
   We were sitting in a hot truck, just off the bridge, on a one-lane dirt road without a house or another vehicle in sight. It struck me as the perfect place and time for an important conversation.
   “What is it?” she said, folding her arms across her chest as if she’d already decided I’d done something terrible.
   There were so many secrets. Hank and the Sisco beating. Tally at the creek. The birth of Libby’s baby. But those had been tucked away for a while. I’d become adept at keeping them private. The current one, though, had to be shared with my mother.
   “I think Tally and Cowboy like each other,” I said, and immediately I felt lighter.
   “Is that so?” she said with a smile, as if I didn’t know much because I was just a kid. Then the smile slowly vanished as she considered this. I wondered if she, too, knew something about the secret romance.
   “Yes ma’am.”
   “And what makes you think this?”
   “I caught them in the cotton patch this mornin’.”
   “What were they doing?” she asked, seeming a little frightened that maybe I’d seen something I shouldn’t have.
   “I don’t know, but they were together.”
   “Did you see them?”
   I told her the story, beginning with the voices, then the cotton-mouth, then their escape. I omitted no details, and, amazingly, I did not exaggerate anything. Maybe the size of the snake, but for the most part I clung to the truth.
   She absorbed it and seemed genuinely astounded.
   “What were they doin’, Mom?” I asked.
   “I don’t know. You didn’t see anything, did you?”
   “No ma’am. Do you think they were kissin’?”
   “Probably,” she said quickly.
   She reached for the ignition again and said, “Oh well, I’ll talk to your father about it.”
   We drove away in a hurry. After a moment or two I really couldn’t tell if I felt any better. She’d told me many times that little boys shouldn’t keep secrets from their mothers. But every time I confessed one, she was quick to shrug it off and tell my father what I’d told her. I’m not sure how I benefited from being so candid. But it was all I could do. Now the adults knew about Tally and Cowboy. Let them worry about the problem.
   The Latchers were picking near their house, so by the time we rolled to a stop, we had an audience. Mrs. Latcher emerged from the house and managed a smile, then she helped us haul the food to the front porch.
   “I guess you wanna see the baby,” she said softly to my mother.
   I wanted to see it also, but I knew my chances were slim. The women went into the house. I found a spot under a tree near our truck, and I planned to loiter, alone, just minding my own business while I waited for my mother. I didn’t want to see any of the Latchers. The fact that we were now probably related by blood made me ill.
   Three of them suddenly appeared from around the truck-three boys, with Percy leading the group. The other two were younger and smaller but just as lean and wiry as Percy. They approached me without a word.
   “Howdy, Percy,” I said, trying to at least be polite.
   “What’re you doin’ here?” he growled. He had a brother on each side, all three of them lined up against me.
   “My mother made me come,” I said.
   “You ain’t got no business here.” He was practically hissing through his teeth, and I wanted to back up. In fact, I wanted to tuck tail and run.
   “I’m waitin’ for my mother,” I said.
   “We’re gonna whup your ass,” Percy said, and all three of them clenched their fists.
   “Why?” I managed to say.
   “ ‘Cause you’re a Chandler, and your Ricky did that to Libby.”
   “Wasn’t my fault,” I said.
   “Don’t matter.” The smallest one looked particularly fierce. He was squinting and twisting his mouth up at the corners, sort of snarling at me, and I figured the first punch would come from him.
   “Three on one ain’t fair,” I said.
   “Wasn’t fair what happened to Libby,” Percy said and then, quick as a cat, he punched me in the stomach. A horse could not have kicked any harder, and I went down with a shriek.
   I’d had a few scuffles at school-playground push-and-shoves that were broken up by the teachers before serious blows were landed. Mrs. Emma Enos, the third-grade teacher, gave me three licks for trying to fight Joey Stallcup, and Pappy could not have been prouder. And Ricky used to be rough with me, wrestling and boxing and such. I was no stranger to violence. Pappy loved to fight, and when I hit the ground, I thought of him. Somebody kicked me; I grabbed a foot, and instantly there was a pile of little warriors, all kicking and clawing and cussing in the dirt. I grabbed the hair of the midsized one while the other two pounded my back. I was determined to yank his head off when Percy landed a nasty shot to my nose. I went blind for a second, and they, squealing like wild animals, piled on again.
   I heard the women yell from the porch. It’s about time! I thought. Mrs. Latcher arrived first and began pulling boys from the heap, scolding them loudly as she flung them around. Since I was on the bottom, I got up last. My mother looked at me in horror. My clean clothes were covered with dirt. My nose was oozing warm blood.
   “Luke, are you all right?” she said, grabbing my shoulders.
   My eyes were watery, and I was beginning to ache. I nodded my head yes, no problem.
   “Cut me a switch!” Mrs. Latcher yelled at Percy. She was growling and still flinging the two smaller ones around. “Whatta you mean beatin’ up that little boy like that? He ain’t done nothin’.”
   The blood was really flowing now, dripping off my chin and staining my shirt. My mother made me lie down and tilt my head back to stop the bleeding, and while we were doing this, Percy produced a stick.
   “I want you to watch this,” Mrs. Latcher said in my direction.
   “No, Darla,” my mother said. “We’re leaving.”
   “No, I want your boy to see this,” she said. “Now bend over, Percy.”
   “I ain’t gonna do it, Ma,” Percy said, obviously scared.
   “Bend over, or I’ll get your father. I’ll teach you some manners. Beatin’ up that little boy, a visitor to our place.”
   “No,” Percy said, and she hit him in the head with the stick. He screamed, and she whacked him across the ear.
   She made him bend over and grab his ankles. “You let go and I’ll beat you for a week,” she threatened him. He was already crying when she started flogging away. Both my mother and I were stunned by her anger and brutality. After eight or ten very hard licks, Percy started yelping. “Shut up!” she shouted.
   Her arms and legs were as thin as the stick, but what she lacked in size she made up for in quickness. Her blows landed like machine-gun fire, fast and crisp, popping like a bullwhip. Ten, twenty, thirty shots, and Percy was bawling, “Please stop it, Ma! I’m sorry!”
   The beating went on and on, far past the point of punishment. When her arm was tired, she shoved him to the ground, and Percy curled into a tight ball and wept. By then the other two were already in tears. She grabbed the middle one by the hair. She called him Ray-ford and said, “Bend over.” Rayford slowly clutched his ankles and somehow withstood the assault that followed.
   “Let’s go,” my mother whispered to me. “You can lie down in the back.”
   She helped me up to the bed of the truck, and by then Mrs. Latcher was pulling on the other boy, yanking him by the hair. Percy and Rayford were lying in the dirt, victims of the battle they’d started. My mother turned the truck around, and as we drove off, Mrs. Latcher was battering the youngest one. There were loud voices, and I sat up just enough to see Mr. Latcher running around the house with a trail of children behind him. He yelled at his wife; she ignored him and kept hammering away. When he reached her, he grabbed her. Kids were swarming everywhere; everyone seemed to be either screaming or crying.
   The dust boiled behind us, and I lost sight of them. As I lay down again and tried to get comfortable, I prayed that I would never again set foot on their farm. I never wanted to see any of those people for the rest of my life. And I prayed long and hard that no one would ever hear the rumor that the Chandlers and the Latchers were related.
   My return home was triumphant. The Spruills were cleaned up and ready for town. They were sitting under a tree, drinking iced tea with Pappy and Gran and my father, when we rolled to a stop less than twenty feet away. As dramatically as I could, I stood in the back of the truck, and with great satisfaction watched them react in shock at the sight of me. There I was-beaten, bloodied, dirty, clothes ripped, but still standing.
   I climbed down, and everyone gathered around me. My mother stormed forward and very angrily said, “You’re not gonna believe what happened! Three of them jumped Luke! Percy and two others caught him when I was in the house. The little criminals! We’re takin’ food over, and they pull a stunt like this.”
   Tally was concerned, too, and I think she wanted to reach out and touch me, to make sure I was all right.
   “Three of ‘em?” Pappy repeated, his eyes dancing.
   “Yes, and they were all bigger than Luke,” my mother said, and the legend began to grow. The size of my three attackers would increase as the days and months went by.
   Gran was in my face, staring at my nose, which had a small cut on it. “Might be broken,” she said, and though I was thrilled to hear it, I was not looking forward to her treatment.
   “You didn’t run, did you?” Pappy asked. He, too, was moving in closer.
   “No sir,” I said proudly. I’d still be running if given half a chance.
   “He did not,” my mother said sternly. “He was kickin’ and clawin’ just as hard as they were.”
   Pappy beamed, and my father smiled.
   “We’ll go back tomorrow and finish ‘em off,” Pappy said.
   “You’ll do no such thing,” my mother said. She was irritated because Pappy loved a brawl. But then, she came from a house full of girls. She did not understand fighting.
   “Did you land a good punch?” Pappy asked.
   “They were all cryin’ when I left,” I said.
   My mother rolled her eyes.
   Hank shoved his way through the group and bent down to inspect the damage. “Say there was three of ‘em, huh?” he growled at me.
   “Yes sir,” I said, nodding.
   “Good for you, boy. It’ll make you tough.”
   “Yes sir,” I said.
   “If you want me to, I’ll show you some tricks on how to handle a three-on-one situation,” he said with a smile.
   “Let’s get cleaned up,” my mother said.
   “I think it’s broken,” Gran said.
   “You okay, Luke?” Tally asked.
   “Yep,” I said, as tough as I could.
   They led me away in a victory march.

Chapter 23

   The Fall Picnic was always held on the last Sunday in September, though no one knew exactly why. It was simply a tradition in Black Oak, a ritual as ingrained as the carnival and the spring revival. It was supposed to somehow link the coming of a new season, the beginning of the end of the harvest, and the end of baseball. It wasn’t clear if all this was accomplished with one picnic, but at least the effort was made.
   We shared the day with the Methodists, our friends and friendly rivals. Black Oak was too small to be divided. There were no ethnic groups, no blacks or Jews or Asians, no permanent outsiders of any variety. We were all of Anglo-Irish stock, maybe a strain or two of German blood, and everybody farmed or sold to the farmers. Every body was a Christian or claimed to be. Disagreements flared up when a Cubs fan said too much at the Tea Shoppe, or when some idiot declared John Deere to be inferior to another brand of tractor, but for the most part life was peaceful. The older boys and younger men liked to fight behind the Co-op on Saturdays, but it was more sport than anything else. A beating like the one Hank gave the Siscos was so rare that the town was still talking about it.
   Individual grudges lasted a lifetime; Pappy carried more than his share. But there were no serious enemies. There was a clear social order, with the sharecroppers at the bottom and the merchants at the top, and everyone was expected to know his place. But folks got along.
   The line between Baptists and Methodists was never straight and true. Their worship was slightly different, with the ritual of sprinkling little babies being their most flagrant deviation from the Scriptures, as we saw things. And they didn’t meet as often, which, of course, meant that they were not as serious about their faith. Nobody met as much as us Baptists. We took great pride in constant worship. Pearl Watson, my favorite Methodist, said she’d like to be a Baptist, but that she just wasn’t physically able.
   Ricky told me once in private that when he left the farm he might become a Catholic because they only met once a week. I didn’t know what a Catholic was, and so he tried to explain things, but Ricky on theology was a shaky discussion at best.
   My mother and Gran spent more time than usual ironing our clothes that Sunday morning. And I certainly got scrubbed with more purpose. Much to my disappointment, my nose had not been broken, there was no swelling, and the cut was barely noticeable.
   We had to look our very best because the Methodist ladies had slightly nicer dresses. In spite of all the fuss, I was excited and couldn’t wait to get to town.
   We had invited the Spruills. This was done out of a sense of friendliness and Christian concern, though I wanted to pick and choose. Tally would be welcome; the rest could stay in the front yard for all I cared. But when I surveyed their camp after breakfast, I saw little movement. Their truck had not been disconnected from the myriad of wires and ropes that held their shelters upright. “They ain’t comin’,” I reported to Pappy, who was studying his Sunday school lesson.
   “Good,” he said quietly.
   The prospect of Hank milling about the picnic, grazing from table to table, gorging himself on food and looking for a fight, was not appealing.
   The Mexicans really had no choice. My mother had extended an invitation to Miguel early in the week, then followed it up with a couple of gentle reminders as Sunday grew near. My father had explained to him that a special worship service would be held in Spanish, then there would be plenty of good food. They had little else to do on Sunday afternoons.
   Nine of them piled into the back of our truck; only Cowboy was absent. This set my imagination on fire. Where was he and what was he doing? Where was Tally? I didn’t see her in the front yard as we drove away. My heart sank as I thought of them back in the fields, hiding and doing whatever they wanted to do. Instead of going to church with us, Tally was probably sneaking around again, doing bad things. What if she now used Cowboy as her lookout while she bathed in Siler’s Creek? I couldn’t stand that thought, and I worried about her all the way to town.

   Brother Akers, with a rare smile on his face, took the pulpit. The sanctuary was packed, and people were sitting in the aisles and standing along the back wall. The windows were open, and on the north side of the church, under a tall oak, the Mexicans were grouped together, hats off, dark heads making a sea of brown.
   He welcomed our guests, our visitors from the hills, and also the Mexicans. There were a few hill people, but not many. As always, he asked them to stand and identify themselves. They were from places like Hardy, Mountain Home, and Calico Rock, and they were as spruced up as we were.
   A loudspeaker had been placed in a window, so Brother Akers’s words were broadcast out of the sanctuary and into the general direction of the Mexicans, where Mr. Carl Durbin picked up the words and translated them into Spanish. Mr. Durbin was a retired missionary from Jonesboro. He’d worked in Peru for thirty years among some real Indians up in the mountains, and every so often he’d come and talk to us during missions week and show us photos and slides of the strange land he’d left behind. In addition to Spanish, he also spoke an Indian dialect, and this forever fascinated me.
   Mr. Durbin stood under the shade tree with Mexicans seated on the grass all around him. He wore a white suit and a white straw hat, and his voice carried back to the church with almost as much volume as old Brother Akers’s did with the loudspeaker. Ricky’d once said that Mr. Durbin had a lot more sense than Brother Akers, and he’d offered this opinion over Sunday dinner and created trouble yet again. It was a sin to criticize your preacher, at least out loud.
   I sat at the end of the pew, next to the window, so I could watch and listen to Mr. Durbin. I couldn’t understand a word he was saying, but I knew his Spanish was slower than the Mexicans’. They talked so fast that I often wondered how they understood each other. His sentences were smooth and deliberate and laden with a heavy Arkansas accent. Though I had not a clue as to what he was saying, he was still more captivating than Brother Akers.
   Not surprisingly, with such a large crowd, the morning’s sermon took on a life of its own and became a marathon. Small crowd, shorter sermon. Big crowd, like Easter and Mother’s Day and the Fall Picnic, and Brother Akers felt the need to perform. At some point, in the midst of his ramblings, Mr. Durbin seemed to get bored with it all. He ignored the message being broadcast from inside the sanctuary and began to deliver his own sermon. When Brother Akers paused to catch his breath, Mr. Durbin kept right on preaching. And when Brother Akers’s hellfire and brimstone was at its fever pitch, Mr. Durbin was resting with a glass of water. He took a seat on the ground with the Mexicans and waited for the shouting to stop inside the sanctuary.
   I waited, too. I passed the time by dreaming of the food that we’d soon have-heaping plates of fried chicken and gallons of homemade ice cream.
   The Mexicans began glancing at the church windows. I’m sure they thought Brother Akers had gone crazy. “Relax,” I wanted to tell them, “it happens all the time.”
   We sang five stanzas of “Just As I Am” for the benediction. No one walked down the aisle, and Brother Akers reluctantly dismissed us. I met Dewayne at the front door, and we raced down the street to the baseball field to see if the Methodists were there. Of course they were; they never worshiped as long as we did.
   Behind the backstop, under three elm trees that had caught a million foul balls, the food was being arranged on picnic tables covered with redand-white checkerboard cloths. The Methodists were swarming around, the men and children hauling food while the ladies organized the dishes. I found Pearl Watson and chatted her up. “Brother Akers still goin’?” she asked with a grin.
   “He just turned us loose,” I said. She gave Dewayne and me two chocolate cookies. I ate mine in two bites.
   Finally, the Baptists started arriving, amid a chorus of “Hello” and “Where you been?” and “What took so long?” Cars and trucks were pulled close, and soon were parked bumper to bumper along the fences around the field. At least one and maybe two would get hit with foul balls. Two years earlier, Mr. Wilber Shifflett’s brand-new Chrysler sedan lost a windshield when Ricky hit a home run over the left-field fence. The explosion had been terrific-a loud thud, then the racket of glass bursting. But Mr. Shifflett had money, so no one got too worried. He knew the risks when he parked there. The Methodists beat us that year, too, seven to five, and Ricky was of the opinion that the manager, Pappy, should’ve changed pitchers in the third inning.
   They didn’t speak to each other for some time.
   The tables were soon covered with large bowls of vegetables, platters heaped with fried chicken, and baskets filled with corn bread, rolls, and other breads. Under the direction of the Methodist minister’s wife, Mrs. Orr, dishes were moved here and there until a certain order took shape. One table had nothing but raw vegetables-tomatoes of a dozen varieties, cucumbers, white and yellow onions in vinegar. Next to it were the beans-black-eyed peas, crowder peas, green beans cooked with ham, and butter beans. Every picnic had potato salad, and every chef had a different recipe. Dewayne and I counted eleven large bowls of the dish, and no two looked the same. Deviled eggs were almost as popular, and there were plates of them that covered half a table. Last, and most important, was the fried chicken. There was enough to feed the town for a month.
   The ladies scurried about, fussing over the food while the men talked and laughed and greeted each other, but always with one eye on the chicken. Kids were everywhere, and Dewayne and I drifted to one tree in particular, where some ladies were arranging the desserts. I counted sixteen coolers of homemade ice cream, all covered tightly with towels and packed with ice.
   Once the preparations had met the approval of Mrs. Orr, her husband, the Reverend Vernon Orr, stood in the center of the tables with Brother Akers, and the crowd grew still and quiet. The year before, Brother Akers had thanked God for His blessings; this year the honor went to the Methodists. The picnic had an unspoken pattern to it. We bowed our heads and listened as the Reverend Orr thanked God for His goodness, for all the wonderful food, for the weather, the cotton, and on and on. He left out nothing; Black Oak was indeed grateful for everything.
   I could smell the chicken. I could taste the brownies and ice cream. Dewayne kicked me, and I wanted to lay him out. I didn’t, though, because I’d get whipped for fighting during a prayer.
   When the Reverend Orr finally finished, the men corralled the Mexicans and lined them up to be served. This was a tradition; Mexicans first, hill people second, children third, then the adults. Stick Powers appeared from nowhere, in uniform, of course, and managed to cut in line between the Mexicans and the hill folks. I heard him explain that he was on duty and didn’t have much time. He carried away two plates-one covered with chicken and one covered with everything else he could pile on. We knew he’d eat until he was stuffed, then find a tree on the edge of town and sleep off his lunch.
   Several of the Methodists asked me about Ricky-how was he doing, had we heard from him. I tried to be nice and answer their questions, but as a family we Chandlers did not enjoy this attention. And now that we were horrified over the Latcher secret, any mention of Ricky in public scared us.
   “Tell him we’re thinkin’ about him,” they said. They always said this, as if we owned a phone and called him every night.
   “We’re prayin’ for him,” they said.
   “Thank you,” I always replied.
   A perfectly wonderful moment like the Fall Picnic could be ruined with an unexpected question about Ricky. He was in Korea, in the trenches, in the thick of the war, dodging bullets and killing people, not knowing if he would ever come home to go to church with us, to picnic with the town, to play against the Methodists again. In the midst of the excitement I suddenly felt very alone, and very frightened.
   “Get tough,” Pappy would say. The food helped immensely. Dewayne and I took our plates and sat behind the first-base dugout, where there was a small sliver of shade. Quilts were being placed all around the outfield, and families were sitting together in the sun. Umbrellas were popping up; the ladies were fanning their faces, their small children, and their plates. The Mexicans were squeezed under one tree, down the rightfield foul line, away from the rest of us. Juan had confessed to me the year before that they weren’t sure if they liked fried chicken. I’d never heard such nonsense. It was a heck of a lot better than tortillas, I’d thought at the time.
   My parents and grandparents ate together on a quilt near third base. After much haggling and negotiating, I’d been granted permission to eat with my buddies, a huge step for a seven-year-old.
   The line never stopped. By the time the men reached the last table, the teenaged boys were back for more. One plate was enough for me. I wanted to save room for the ice cream. Before long we wandered over to the dessert table, where Mrs. Irene Flanagan was standing guard, preventing vandalism from the likes of us.
   “How many chocolates you got?” I asked, looking at the collection of ice cream coolers just waiting in the shade.
   She smiled and said, “Oh, I don’t know. Several.”
   “Did Mrs. Cooper bring her peanut butter ice cream?” Dewayne asked.
   “She did,” Mrs. Flanagan said and pointed to a cooler in the middle of the pack. Mrs. Cooper somehow mixed chocolate and peanut butter in her ice cream, and the results were incredible. Folks clamored for it all year round. The year before, two teenaged boys, one a Baptist and one a Methodist, almost came to blows over who would get the next serving. While peace was being restored by the Reverend Orr, Dewayne managed to grab two bowls of the stuff. He charged down the street with them and hid behind a shed, where he devoured every drop. He talked of little else for a month.
   Mrs. Cooper was a widow. She lived in a pretty little house two blocks behind Pop and Pearl’s store, and when she needed yard work done she’d simply make a cooler of peanut butter ice cream. Teenagers would materialize from nowhere, and she had the neatest yard in town. Even grown men had been known to stop by and pull a few weeds.
   “You’ll have to wait,” Mrs. Flanagan said.
   “Till when?” I asked.
   “Till everyone is finished.”
   We waited forever. Some of the older boys and the younger men began stretching their muscles and tossing baseballs in the outfield. The adults talked and visited and talked and visited, and I was certain the ice cream was melting. The two umpires arrived from Monette, and this sent a ripple of excitement through the crowd. They, of course, had to be fed first, and for a while they were more concerned with fried chicken than with baseball. Slowly, the quilts and umbrellas were taken from the outfield. The picnic was ending. It was almost time for the game.
   The ladies gathered around the dessert table and began serving us. Finally Dewayne got his peanut butter ice cream. I opted for two scoops of chocolate over one of Mrs. Lou Kiner’s fudge brownies. For twenty minutes there was a near-riot around the dessert table, but order was maintained. Both preachers stood in the midst of the pack, both eating as much ice cream as anybody else. The umpires declined, citing the heat as the reason that they should finally stop eating.
   Someone shouted, “Play ball!” and the crowd moved toward the backstop. The Methodists were coached by Mr. Duffy Lewis, a farmer out west of town and, according to Pappy, a man of limited baseball intelligence. But after four losses in a row, Pappy’s low opinion of Mr. Lewis had become almost muted. The umpires called the two coaches to a meeting behind home plate, and for a long time they discussed Black Oak’s version of the rules of baseball. They pointed to fences and poles and limbs overhanging the field-each had its own rules and its own history. Pappy disagreed with most of what the umpires said, and the haggling went on and on.
   The Baptists had been the home team the year before, so we hit first. The Methodist pitcher was Buck Prescott, son of Mr. Sap Prescott, one of the largest landowners in Craighead County. Buck was in his early twenties and had attended Arkansas State for two years, something that was quite rare. He had tried to pitch in college, but there had been some problems with the coach. He was left-handed, threw nothing but curveballs, and had beaten us the year before, nine to two. When he walked out to the mound, I knew we were in for a long day. His first pitch was a slow, looping curveball that was high and outside but called a strike anyway, and Pappy was already yapping at the umpire. Buck walked the first two batters, struck out the next two, then retired my father on a fly ball to center field.
   Our pitcher was Duke Ridley, a young farmer with seven kids and a fastball even I could hit. He claimed he once pitched in Alaska during the war, but this had not been verified. Pappy thought it was a lie, and after watching him get shelled the year before, I had serious doubts, too. He walked the first three batters while throwing only one strike, and I thought Pappy might charge the mound and maim him. Their cleanup batter popped up to the catcher. The next guy flied out to shallow left. We got lucky when their number-six batter, Mr. Lester Hurdle, at age fifty-two the oldest player on either roster, hit a long fly ball to right, where our fielder, Bennie Jenkins, gloveless and shoeless, caught it with his bare hands.
   The game settled into a pitcher’s duel, not necessarily because the pitching was sharp, but more because neither team could hit. We drifted back to the ice cream, where the last melting remnants were being dished out. By the third inning the ladies of both denominations had grouped into small clusters of conversation and, for them, the game was of lesser importance. Somewhere not far away, a car radio was on, and I could hear Harry Caray. The Cardinals were playing the Cubs in the final game of the season.
   As Dewayne and I retreated from the dessert table with our last cups of ice cream, we walked behind a quilt where half a dozen young women were resting and talking. “Well, how old is Libby?” I heard one of them say.
   I stopped, took a bite, and looked beyond them at the game as if I weren’t the least bit interested in what they were saying.
   “She’s just fifteen,” another said.
   “She’s a Latcher. She’ll have another one soon.”
   “Is it a boy or a girl?”
   “Boy’s what I heard.”
   “And the daddy?”
   “Not a clue. She won’t tell anybody.”
   “Come on,” Dewayne said, hitting me with his elbow. We moved away and walked to the first-base dugout. I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or scared. Word was out that the Latcher baby had arrived, but its father had not been identified.
   It wouldn’t be long, I thought. And we’d be ruined. I’d have a cousin who was a Latcher, and everybody would know it.
   The tight pitching duel ended in the fifth inning when both teams erupted for six runs. For thirty minutes baseballs were flying everywhere-line drives, wild throws, balls in the outfield gaps. We changed pitchers twice, and I knew we were in trouble when Pappy went to the mound and pointed at my father. He was not a pitcher, but at that point there was no one left. He kept his pitches low, though, and we were soon out of the inning.
   “Musial’s pitching!” someone yelled. It was either a joke or a mistake. Stan Musial was a lot of things, but he’d never pitched before. We ran behind the bleachers to where the cars were parked. A small crowd was closing in on a ‘48 Dodge owned by Mr. Rafe Henry. Its radio was at full volume, and Harry Caray was wild-Stan the Man was indeed on the mound, pitching against the Cubs, against Frankie Baumholtz, the man he’d battled all year for the hitting title. The crowd at Sportsman’s Park was delirious. Harry was yelling into the microphone. We were shocked at the thought of Musial on the mound.
   Baumholtz hit a ground ball to third, and they sent Musial back to center field. I ran to the first-base dugout and told Pappy that Stan the Man had actually pitched, but he didn’t believe me. I told my father, and he looked suspicious, too. The Methodists were up eight to six, in the bottom of the seventh, and the Baptist dugout was tense. A good flood would have caused less concern, at least at that moment.
   It was at least ninety-five degrees. The players were soaked with sweat, their clean overalls and white Sunday shirts stuck to their skin. They were moving slower-paying the price for all that fried chicken and potato salad-and not hustling enough to suit Pappy.
   Dewayne’s father wasn’t playing, so they left after a couple of hours. A few others drifted away. The Mexicans were still under their tree by the right-field foul pole, but they were sprawled out now and appeared to be sleeping. The ladies were even more involved with their shade-tree gossip; they could not have cared less who won the game.
   I sat alone in the bleachers and watched the Methodists score three more in the eighth. I dreamed of the day when I’d be out there, hitting home runs and making incredible plays in center field. Those wretched Methodists wouldn’t have a chance when I got big enough.
   They won eleven to eight, and for the fifth year in a row Pappy had led the Baptists to defeat. The players shook hands and laughed when the game was over, then headed to the shade, where iced tea was waiting. Pappy didn’t smile or laugh, nor did he shake hands with anybody. He disappeared for a while, and I knew he would pout for a week.
   The Cardinals lost, too, three to zero. They finished the season four games behind the Giants and eight games behind the Brooklyn Dodgers, who would face the Yankees in an all-New York World Series.
   The leftovers were gathered and hauled back to the cars and trucks. The tables were cleaned, and the litter was picked up. I helped Mr. Duffy Lewis rake the mound and home plate, and when we finished, the field looked as good as ever. It took an hour to say goodbye to everyone. There were the usual threats from the losing team about what would happen next year, and the usual taunts from the winners. As far as I could tell, no one was upset but Pappy.
   As we left town I thought about the end of the season. Baseball began in the spring, when we planted and when hopes were high. It sustained us through the summer, often our only diversion from the drudgery of the fields. We listened to each game, then talked about the plays and the players and the strategies until we listened to the next one. It was very much a part of our daily lives for six months, then it was gone. Just like the cotton.
   I was sad by the time we arrived home. No games to listen to on the front porch. Six months without the voice of Harry Caray. Six months with no Stan Musial. I got my glove and went for a long walk down a field road, tossing the ball in the air, wondering what I would do until April.
   For the first time in my life, baseball broke my heart.

Chapter 24

   The heat broke in the first few days of October. The nights became cool, and the rides to the fields in the early morning were chilly. The stifling humidity was gone, and the sun lost its glare. By midday it was hot again, but not August-hot, and by dark the air was light. We waited, but the heat did not return. The seasons were changing; the days grew shorter.
   Since the sun didn’t sap our strength as much, we worked harder and picked more. And, of course, the change in weather was all Pappy needed to embrace yet another level of concern. With winter just around the corner, he now remembered tales of staring at rows and rows of muddy, rotting, and unpicked cotton on Christmas Day.
   After a month in the fields, I missed school. Classes would resume at the end of October, and I began thinking of how nice it would be to sit at a desk all day, surrounded by friends instead of cotton stalks, and with no Spruills to worry about. Now that baseball was over, I had to dream about something. It was a tribute to my desperation to be left with only school to long for.
   My return to school would be glorious because I would be wearing my shiny new Cardinals baseball jacket. Hidden inside my cigar box in the top drawer of my bureau was the grand sum of $14.50, the result of hard work and frugal spending. I was reluctantly tithing money to the church and investing wisely in Saturday movies and popcorn, but for the most part my wages were being tucked safely away next to my Stan Musial baseball card and the pearl-handled pocketknife that Ricky gave me the day he left for Korea.
   I wanted to order the jacket from Sears, Roebuck, but my mother insisted I wait until the harvest was over. We were still negotiating this. Shipping took two weeks, and I was determined to return to class decked out in Cardinal red.

   Stick Powers was waiting for us late one afternoon. I was with Gran and my mother, and we had left the fields a few minutes ahead of the others. As always, Stick was sitting under a tree, the one next to Pappy’s truck, and his sleepy eyes betrayed the fact that he’d been napping.
   He tipped his hat to my mother and Gran and said, “Afternoon, Ruth, Kathleen.”
   “Hello, Stick,” Gran said. “What can we do for you?”
   “Lookin’ for Eli or Jesse.”
   “They’ll be along shortly. Somethin’ the matter?”
   Stick chewed on the blade of grass protruding from his lips and took a long look at the fields as if he were burdened with heavy news that might or might not be suitable for women.
   “What is it, Stick?” Gran asked. With a boy off in the war, every visit by a man in a uniform was frightening. In 1944 one of Stick’s predecessors had delivered the news that my father had been wounded at Anzio.
   Stick looked at the women and decided they could be trusted. He said, “That eldest Sisco boy, Grady, the one in prison for killin’ a man over in Jonesboro, well, he escaped last week. They say he’s back in these parts.”
   For a moment the women said nothing. Gran was relieved that the news wasn’t about Ricky. My mother was bored with the whole Sisco mess.
   “You’d better tell Eli,” Gran said. “We need to fix supper.”
   They excused themselves and went into the house. Stick watched them, no doubt thinking about supper.
   “Who’d he kill?” I asked Stick as soon as the women were inside.
   “I don’t know.”
   “How’d he kill him?”
   “Beat ‘im with a shovel’s what I heard.”
   “Wow, must’ve been some fight.”
   “I guess.”
   “You think he’s comin’ after Hank?”
   “Look, I’d better go see Eli. Where exactly is he?”
   I pointed to a spot deep in the fields. The cotton trailer was barely visible.
   “That’s a far piece,” Stick mumbled. “Reckon I can drive down there?”;
   “Sure,” I said, already heading for the patrol car. We got in.
   “Don’t touch anything,” Stick said when we were settled into the front seat. I gawked at the switches and radio, and of course Stick had to make the most of the moment. “This here’s the radio,” he said, picking up the mike. “This here flips on the siren, this the lights.” He grabbed a handle on the dash and said, “This here’s the spotlight.”
   “Who do you talk to on the radio?” I asked.
   “HQ mainly. That’s headquarters.”
   “Where’s headquarters?”
   “Over in Jonesboro.”
   “Can you call ‘em right now?”
   Stick reluctantly grabbed the mike, stuck it to his mouth, cocked his head sideways, and, with a frown, said, “Unit four to base. Come in.” His voice was lower, and his words were faster, with much more importance.
   We waited. When HQ didn’t respond, he cocked his head to the other side, pressed the button on the mike, and repeated, “Unit four to base. Come in.”
   “You’re unit four?” I asked.
   “That’s me.”
   “How many units are there?”
   “Depends.”
   I stared at the radio and waited for HQ to acknowledge Stick. It seemed impossible to me that a person sitting in Jonesboro could talk directly to him, and that Stick could talk back.
   In theory that was how it was supposed to work, but evidently HQ wasn’t too concerned with Stick’s whereabouts. For the third time he said into the mike, “Unit four to base. Come in.” His words had a little more bite to them now.
   And for the third time HQ ignored him. After a few long seconds, he slapped the mike back onto the radio and said, “It’s probably ol’ Theodore, asleep again.”
   “Who’s Theodore?” I asked.
   “One of the dispatchers. He sleeps half the time.”
   So do you, I thought to myself. “Can you turn on the siren?” I asked.
   “Nope. It might scare your momma.”
   “What about the lights?”
   “Nope, they burn up the battery.” He reached for the ignition; the engine grunted and strained but wouldn’t turn over.
   He tried again, and just before the engine quit completely, it turned over and started, sputtering and kicking. HQ had obviously given Stick the worst leftover of the fleet. Black Oak was not exactly a hotbed of criminal activity.
   Before he could put it into gear, I saw the tractor moving slowly down the field road. “Here they come,” I said. He squinted and strained, then turned off the engine. We got out of the car and walked back to the tree.
   “You think you wanna be a deputy?” Stick asked.
   And drive a ragged patrol car, nap half the day, and deal with the likes of Hank Spruill and the Siscos? “I’m gonna play baseball,” I said.
   “Where?”
   “St. Louis.”
   “Oh, I see,” he said with one of those funny smiles adults give to little kids who are dreaming. “Ever’ little boy wants to be a Cardinal.”
   I had many more questions for him, most of which dealt with his gun and the bullets that went into it. And I had always wanted to inspect his handcuffs, to see how they locked and unlocked. As he watched the trailer draw nearer, I studied his revolver and holster, eager to grill him.
   But Stick had spent enough time with me. He wanted me to leave. I held my barrage of questions.
   When the tractor stopped, the Spruills and some of the Mexicans crawled off the trailer. Pappy and my father came straight for us, and by the time they stopped under the tree there was already tension.
   “What do you want, Stick?” Pappy snarled.
   Pappy in particular was irritated with Stick and his nagging presence in our lives. We had a crop to harvest; little else mattered. Stick was shadowing us, in town and on our own property.
   “What is it, Stick?” Pappy said. Contempt was evident in his tone. He had just spent ten hours picking five hundred pounds of cotton, and he knew our deputy hadn’t broken a sweat in years.
   “That oldest Sisco boy, Grady, the one in prison for murder, he escaped last week sometime, and I think he’s back home.”
   “Then go get him,” Pappy said.
   “I’m lookin’ for him. I’ve heard they might start some trouble.”
   “Such as?”
   “Who knows with the Siscos. But they might come after Hank.”
   “Let ‘em come,” Pappy said, anxious for a good fight.
   “I’ve heard they’ve got guns.”
   “I got guns, Stick. You get word to the Siscos that if I see one of ‘em anywhere near this place, I’ll blow his stupid head off.” Pappy was practically hissing at Stick by the time he finished. Even my father seemed to warm to the idea of protecting his property and family.
   “It won’t happen out here,” Stick said. “Tell your boy to stay away from town.”
   “You tell him,” Pappy shot back. “He ain’t my boy. I don’t care what happens to ‘im.”
   Stick looked around at the front yard, where the Spruills were going about the business of preparing supper. He had no desire to venture over there.
   He looked at Pappy and said, “Tell him, Eli.” He turned and walked to his car.
   It groaned and sputtered and finally started, and we watched him back into the road and drive away.

   After supper I was watching my father patch an inner tube from our tractor when Tally appeared in the distance. It was late but not yet dark, and she seemed to cling to the long shadows as she moved toward the silo. I watched her carefully until she stopped and waved for me to follow. My father was mumbling, the patching was not going well, and I slipped away toward the house. Then I ran behind our truck, found the shadows, and within seconds we were walking along a field row in the general direction of Siler’s Creek.
   “Where you goin’?” I finally asked, after it became apparent she was not going to speak first.
   “I don’t know. Just walkin’.”
   “You goin’ to the creek?”
   She laughed softly and said, “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Luke? You wanna see me again, don’t you?”
   My cheeks burned, and I couldn’t think of anything to say.
   “Maybe later,” she said.
   I wanted to ask her about Cowboy, but that subject seemed so ugly and private that I didn’t have the nerve to go near it. And I wanted to ask her how she knew that Libby Latcher was telling that Ricky was the father of her baby, but again, it was something else I just couldn’t bring up. Tally was always mysterious, always moody, and I adored her completely. Walking with her along the narrow path made me feel twenty years old.
   “What did that deputy want?” she asked.
   I told her everything. Stick had delivered no forbidden secrets. The Siscos were talking big, and they were crazy enough to try something. I relayed it all to Tally.
   She thought about it as we walked, then asked, “Is Stick gonna arrest Hank for killin’ that boy?”
   I had to be careful here. The Spruills were at war with each other, but any hint of an outside threat and they’d close ranks. “Pappy’s worried about y’all leavin’,” I said.
   “What’s that gotta do with Hank?”
   “If he gets arrested, then y’all might leave.”
   “We ain’t leavin’, Luke. We need the money.”
   We had stopped walking. She was looking at me, and I was studying my bare feet. “I think Stick wants to wait till the cotton’s in,” I said.
   She absorbed this without a word, then turned and started back toward the house. I tagged along, certain I’d said too much. She said good night at the silo and disappeared into the darkness.
   Hours later, when I was supposed to be asleep, I listened through the open window as the Spruills growled and snapped at each other. Hank was in the middle of every fight. I could not always hear what they were saying or bickering about, but it seemed as though each new skirmish was caused by something Hank had said or done. They were tired; he was not. They woke before sunrise and spent at least ten hours in the fields; he slept as late as he wanted, then picked cotton at a languid pace.
   And evidently he was roaming at night again. Miguel was waiting by the back steps when my father and I opened the kitchen door on our way to gather eggs and milk for breakfast. He pleaded for help. The shelling had resumed; someone had bombed the barn with heavy clods of dirt until after midnight. The Mexicans were exhausted and angry, and there was about to be a fight of some variety.
   This was our sole topic of conversation over breakfast, and Pappy was so angry he could barely eat. It was decided that Hank had to go, and if the rest of the Spruills left with him, then we’d somehow manage. Ten well-rested and hardworking Mexicans were far more valuable than the Spruills.
   Pappy started to leave the table and go straight to the front yard with his ultimatum, but my father calmed him. They decided that we would wait until quitting time, thereby getting a full day of labor out of the Spruills. Plus they’d be less likely to break camp with darkness upon them.
   I just listened. I wanted to jump in and describe my conversation with Tally, especially the part about her family needing the money. In my opinion, they wouldn’t leave at all, but would be delighted to get rid of Hank. My opinions, however, were never welcome during these tense family discussions. I chewed my biscuit and hung on every word.
   “What about Stick?” Gran asked.
   “What about him?” Pappy fired in her direction.
   “You were gonna tell Stick when you were finished with Hank.”
   Pappy took a bite of ham and thought about this.
   Gran was a step ahead, but then she had the advantage of thinking without being angry. She sipped her coffee and said, “Seems to me the thing to do is tell Mr. Spruill that Stick is comin’ after Hank. Let the boy sneak away at night. He’ll be gone, that’s all that matters, and the Spruills’ll be thankful you kept him from gettin’ arrested.”
   Gran’s plan made perfect sense. My mother managed a slight grin. Once again the women had analyzed a situation more quickly than the men.
   Pappy didn’t say another word. My father quickly finished eating and went outside. The sun was barely above the distant trees, yet the day was already eventful.

   After lunch Pappy said abruptly, “Luke, we’re goin’ to town. The trailer’s full.”
   The trailer wasn’t completely full, and we never took it to the gin in the middle of the day. But I wasn’t about to object. Something was up.
   There were only four trailers ahead of us when we arrived at the gin. Usually, at this time of the harvest, there would be at least ten, but then we always came after supper, when the place was crawling with farmhands. “Noon’s a good time to gin,” Pappy said.
   He left the keys in the truck, and as we were walking away he said, “I need to go to the Co-op. Let’s head to Main Street.” Sounded good to me.
   The town of Black Oak had three hundred people, and virtually all of them lived within five minutes of Main Street. I often thought how wonderful it would be to have a neat little house on a shady street, just a stone’s throw from Pop and Pearl’s and the Dixie theater, with no cotton anywhere in sight.
   Halfway to Main, we took an abrupt turn. “Pearl wants to see you,” he said, pointing at the Watsons’ house just to our right. I’d never been in Pop and Pearl’s house, never had any reason to enter, but I’d seen it from the outside. It was one of the few houses in town with some bricks on it.
   “What?” I asked, completely bewildered.
   He said nothing, and I just followed.
   Pearl was waiting at the door. When we entered I could smell the rich, sweet aroma of something baking, though I was too confused to realize she was preparing a treat for me. She gave me a pat on the head and winked at Pappy. In one corner of the room, Pop was bent at the waist, his back to us, fiddling with something. “Come here, Luke,” he said, without turning around.
   I’d heard that they owned a television. The first one in our county had been purchased a year earlier by Mr. Harvey Gleeson, the owner of the bank, but he was a recluse, and no one had yet seen his television, as far as we knew. Several church members had kinfolks in Jonesboro who owned televisions, and whenever they went there to visit they came back and talked nonstop about this wonderful new invention. Dewayne had seen one inside a store window in Blytheville, and he’d strutted around school for an insufferable period of time.
   “Sit here,” Pop said, pointing to a spot on the floor, right in front of the set. He was still adjusting knobs. “It’s the World Series,” he said. “Game three, Dodgers at Yankee Stadium.”
   My heart froze; my mouth dropped open. I was too stunned to move. Three feet away was a small screen with lines dancing across it. It was in the center of a dark, wooden cabinet with the word Motorola scripted in chrome just under a row of knobs. Pop turned one of the knobs, and suddenly we heard the scratchy voice of an announcer describing a ground ball to the shortstop. Then Pop turned two knobs at once, and the picture became clear.
   It was a baseball game. Live from Yankee Stadium, and we were watching it in Black Oak, Arkansas!
   Chairs moved behind me, and I could feel Pappy inching closer. Pearl wasn’t much of a fan. She busied herself in the kitchen for a few minutes, then emerged with a plate of chocolate cookies and a glass of milk. I took them and thanked her. They were fresh from the oven and smelled delicious. But I couldn’t eat, not right then.
   Ed Lopat was pitching for the Yankees, Preacher Roe for the Dodgers. Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto, Hank Bauer, Billy Martin with the Yankees, and Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, Jackie Robinson, and Gil Hodges with the Dodgers. They were all there in Pop and Pearl’s living room, playing before sixty thousand fans in Yankee Stadium. I was mesmerized to the point of being mute. I simply stared at the television, watching but not believing.
   “Eat the cookies, Luke,” Pearl said as she passed through the room. It was more of a command than an invitation, and I took a bite of one.
   “Who are you pullin’ for?” asked Pop.
   “I don’t know,” I mumbled, and I really didn’t. I had been taught to hate both teams. And it had been easy hating them when they were away in New York, in another world. But now they were in Black Oak, playing the game I loved, live from Yankee Stadium. My hatred vanished. “Dodgers, I guess,” I said.
   “Always pull for the National League,” Pappy said behind me.
   “I suppose,” Pop said reluctantly. “But it’s mighty hard to pull for the Dodgers.”
   The game was broadcast into our world by Channel 5 out of Memphis, an affiliate of the National Broadcasting Company, whatever that meant. There were commercials for Lucky Strike cigarettes, Cadillac, Coca-Cola, and Texaco. Between innings the game would vanish and there would be a commercial, and when it was over, the screen would change again, and we’d be back inside Yankee Stadium. It was a dizzying experience, one that captivated me completely. For an hour I was transported to another world.
   Pappy had business and at some point left the house and walked to Main Street. I did not hear him leave, but during a commercial I realized he was gone.
   Yogi Berra hit a home run, and as I watched him circle the bases in front of sixty thousand fanatics, I knew I would never again be able to properly hate the Yankees. They were legends, the greatest players on the greatest team the game had known. I softened up considerably but vowed to keep my new feelings to myself. Pappy would not allow Yankee sympathizers in his house.
   In the top of the ninth, Berra let a pitch get past him. The Dodgers scored two runs and won the game. Pearl wrapped the cookies in foil and sent them with me. I thanked Pop for allowing me to share this unbelievable adventure, and I asked him if I could come back when the Cardinals were playing.
   “Sure,” he said, “but it might be a long time.”
   Walking back to the gin, I asked Pappy a few questions about the basics of television broadcasting. He talked about the signals and towers in very vague and confusing terms and finally admitted that he knew little about it, being as how it was such a new invention. I asked when we might get one. “One of these days,” he said, as if it would never happen. I felt ashamed for asking.
   We pulled our empty trailer back to the farm, and I picked cotton until quitting time. During supper the adults gave me the floor. I talked nonstop about the game and the commercials and everything I’d seen on Pop and Pearl’s television.
   Modern America was slowly invading rural Arkansas.

Chapter 25

   Just before dark my father and Mr. Leon Spruill went for a short walk past the silo. My father explained that Stick Powers was preparing to arrest Hank for the murder of Jerry Sisco. Since Hank was causing so much trouble anyway, it might be the perfect time for him to ease away into the night and return to, the hills. Evidently Mr. Spruill took it well and made no threats to leave. Tally was right; they needed the money. And they were sick of Hank. It appeared as though they would stay and finish the harvest.
   We sat on the front porch and watched and listened. There were no sharp words, no signs of breaking camp. Nor was there any evidence that Hank might be leaving. Through the shadows we could see him every now and then, moving around their camp, sitting by the fire, rummaging for more leftovers. One by one the Spruills went to bed. So did we.
   I finished my prayers and was lying in Ricky’s bed, wide awake, thinking about the Yankees and Dodgers, when an argument started in the distance. I slid across the floor and peeked through the window. All was dark and still, and for a moment I couldn’t see anyone. The shadows shifted, and next to the road I could see Mr. Spruill and Hank standing face-to-face, both talking at once. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but they were obviously angry.
   This was too good to miss. I crawled into the hallway and stopped long enough to make sure all the adults were asleep. Then I crept across the living room, through the front screen door, onto the porch, down the steps, and scooted to the hedgerow on the east side of our property. There was a half-moon and scattered clouds, and after a few minutes of silent stalking I was close to the road. Mrs. Spruill had joined the discussion. They were arguing about the Sisco beating.
   Hank was adamant about his innocence. His parents didn’t want him arrested.
   “I’ll kill that fat deputy,” he growled.
   “Just go back home, son, let things cool down,” Mrs. Spruill kept saying.
   “The Chandlers want you to leave,” Mr. Spruill said at one point.
   “I got more money in my pocket than these sodbusters’ll ever have,” Hank snarled.
   The argument was spinning in several directions. Hank said harsh things about us, the Mexicans, Stick Powers, the Siscos, the general population of Black Oak, and he even had a few choice words for his parents and Bo and Dale. Only Tally and Trot went unscathed. His language grew worse and his voice louder, but Mr. and Mrs. Spruill did not retreat.
   “All right, I’ll leave,” he finally said, and he stormed toward a tent to fetch something. I sneaked to the edge of the road, then scampered across it and fell into the depths of the Jeter cotton on the other side. I had a perfect view of our front yard. Hank was stuffing an old canvas bag with food and clothes. My guess was that he would walk to the highway and start hitchhiking. I cut through the rows and crept along the side of the shallow ditch, in the direction of the river. I wanted to see Hank when he walked by.
   They had more words, then Mrs. Spruill said, “We’ll be home in a few weeks.” The talking stopped, and Hank stomped by me, in the center of the road, a bag slung over his shoulder. I inched my way to the end of the row and watched as he headed for the bridge.
   I couldn’t help but smile. Peace would be restored to our farm. I squatted there for a long time, long after Hank had disappeared, and thanked the stars above that he was finally gone.
   I was about to begin my backtracking when something suddenly moved directly across the road from me. The cotton stalks rustled just slightly, and a man rose and stepped forward. He was low and quick, obviously trying to avoid being seen. He glanced back down the road, in the direction of our house, and for an instant the moonlight hit his face. It was Cowboy.
   For a few seconds I was too scared to move. It was safe on the Jeter side of the road, hidden by their cotton. I wanted to retrace my steps, hurry to the house, crawl into Ricky’s bed.
   And I also wanted to see what Cowboy was up to.
   Cowboy stayed in the knee-deep ditch and moved quickly, without a sound. He would advance, then stop and listen. Move forward, then halt. I was a hundred feet behind him, still on Jeter property, moving as fast as I dared. If he heard me, then I would duck into the thick cotton.
   Before long I could see the hulking figure of Hank, still in the center of the road, going home in no particular hurry. Cowboy slowed his chase, and I, too, slowed my pursuit.
   I was barefoot, and if I stepped on a cottonmouth I would die a horrible death. Go home, something told me. Get out of there.
   If Cowboy wanted to fight, why was he waiting? Our farm was now out of sight and sound. But the river was just ahead, and maybe that’s what Cowboy wanted.
   As Hank neared the bridge, Cowboy quickened his pace and started walking in the center of the road. I stayed at the edge of the cotton, sweating and out of breath and wondering why I was being so foolish.
   Hank got to the river and started over the bridge. Cowboy began running. When Hank was about halfway over, Cowboy stopped long enough to cock his arm and throw a rock. It landed on the boards near Hank, who stopped and whirled around. “Come on, you little wetback,” he growled.
   Cowboy never stopped walking. He was on the bridge, heading up the slight incline, showing no fear whatsoever as Hank waited and cursed him. Hank looked twice as big as Cowboy. They would meet in the middle of the bridge, and there was no doubt that one of them was about to get wet.
   When they were close, Cowboy suddenly cocked his arm again and threw another rock, almost at point-blank range. Hank ducked, and somehow it missed him. Then he charged at Cowboy. The switchblade snapped open, and in a flash it was introduced into the fray. Cowboy held it high. Hank caught himself long enough to swing wildly with his bag. It brushed Cowboy and knocked off his hat. The two circled each other on the narrow bridge, both looking for an advantage. Hank growled and cursed and kept his eye on the knife, then he reached into the bag and removed a small jar of something. He gripped it like a baseball and got ready to hurl it. Cowboy kept low, bending at the knees and waist, waiting for the perfect moment. As they circled slowly, each came within inches of the edge of the bridge.
   Hank gave a mighty grunt and threw the jar as hard as he could at Cowboy, who was less than ten feet away. It hit him somewhere in the neck or throat, I couldn’t tell exactly, and for a second Cowboy wobbled as if he might fall. Hank threw the bag at him and charged in. But with amazing quickness Cowboy switched hands with the knife, pulled a rock from his right pants pocket, and threw it harder than any baseball he’d ever pitched. It hit Hank somewhere in the face. I couldn’t see it, but I certainly heard it. Hank screamed and clutched his face, and by the time he could recover it was too late.
   Cowboy ducked and hooked low and drove the blade up through Hank’s stomach and chest. Hank let loose with a painful squeal, one of horror and shock.
   Then Cowboy yanked it out and thrust it in again and again. Hank dropped to one knee, then two. His mouth was open, but nothing came out. He just stared at Cowboy, his face frozen in terror.
   With strokes that were quick and vicious, Cowboy slashed away and finished the job. When Hank was down and still, Cowboy quickly went through his pants pockets and robbed him. Then he dragged him to the side of the bridge and shoved him over. The corpse landed with a splash and immediately went under. Cowboy went through the bag, found nothing he wanted, and threw it over, too. He stood at the edge of the bridge and watched the water for a long time.
   I had no desire to join Hank, so I burrowed between two rows of cotton and hid so low that I couldn’t have found myself. My heart was pounding faster than ever before. I was shaking and sweating and crying and praying, too. I should’ve been in bed, safe and asleep with my parents next door and my grandparents just down the hall. But they seemed so far away. I was alone in a shallow foxhole, alone and frightened and in great danger. I’d just seen something that I still didn’t believe.
   I don’t know how long Cowboy stood there on the bridge, watching the water, making sure Hank was gone. The clouds would move over the half-moon, and I could barely see him. They’d move again, and there he was, still standing, his dirty cowboy hat cocked to one side. After a long time, he walked off the bridge and stopped by the edge of the river to wash his knife. He watched the river some more, then turned and started walking down the road. When he passed me he was twenty feet away, and I felt like I was buried at least two feet in the ground.
   I waited forever, until he was long out of sight, until there was no possible way he could hear me, then I crawled out of my little hole and began my journey home. I wasn’t sure what I would do once I got there, but I’d be safe. I’d think of something.
   I stayed low, moving through the tall Johnson grass along the edge of the field. As farmers we hated Johnson grass, but for the first time in my life I was thankful for it. I wanted to hurry, to sprint down the middle of the road and get home as fast as possible, but I was terrified, and my feet were heavy. Fatigue and fear gripped me, and I could hardly move at times. It took forever before I saw the outlines of our house and barn. I watched the road in front of me, certain that Cowboy was up there somewhere, watching his rear, watching his flanks. I tried not to think about Hank. I was too concerned with getting to the house.
   When I stopped to catch my breath, I picked up the unmistakable smell of a Mexican. They seldom bathed, and after a few days of picking cotton they took on their own particular odor.
   It passed quickly, and after a minute or two of heavy breathing I wondered if I was just imagining things. Not taking chances, I retreated once again to the depths of the Jeter cotton and slowly headed east, cutting through row after row without a sound. When I could see the white tents of Camp Spruill, I knew I was almost home.
   What would I tell about Hank? The truth, nothing but. I was burdened with enough secrets; there was room for no more, especially one as heavy as this. I’d crawl into Ricky’s room, try and get some sleep, and when my father woke me to collect eggs and milk I’d tell the whole story. Every step, every move, every cut of the knife-my father would hear it all. He and Pappy would head to town to report the killing to Stick Powers, and they’d have Cowboy in jail before lunch. They’d probably hang him before Christmas.
   Hank was dead. Cowboy would be in jail. The Spruills would pack up and leave, but I didn’t care. I never wanted to see another Spruill, not even Tally. I wanted everybody off our farm and out of our lives.
   I wanted Ricky to come home and the Latchers to move away, then everything would be normal again.
   When I was within sprinting distance of our front porch, I decided to make my move. My nerves were frayed, my patience gone. I’d been hiding for hours, and I was tired of it. I scooted to the very end of the cotton rows and stepped over the ditch into the road. I ducked low, listened for a second, then started to run. After two steps, maybe three, there was a sound from behind, then a hand slapped my feet together and down I went. Cowboy was on top of me, a knee in my chest, the switchblade an inch from my nose. His eyes were glowing. “Silence!” he hissed.
   We were both breathing hard and sweating profusely, and his odor hit me hard; no doubt the same one I’d smelled just minutes earlier. I stopped wiggling and gritted my teeth. His knee was crushing me.
   “Been to the river?” he asked.
   I shook my head no. Sweat from his chin dripped into my eyes and burned. He waved the blade a little, as if I couldn’t see it already.
   “Then where you been?” he asked.
   I shook my head again; I couldn’t speak. Then I realized my whole body was shaking, trembling in rigid fear.
   When it was apparent I could not utter a word, he took the tip of the blade and tapped my forehead. “You speak one word about tonight,” he said slowly, his eyes doing more talking than his mouth, “and I will kill your mother. Understand?”
   I nodded fiercely. He stood and walked away, quickly disappearing into the blackness and leaving me in the dust and dirt of our road. I started crying, and crawling, and I made it to our truck before I passed out.

   They found me under their bed. In the confusion of the moment, with my parents yelling at me and quizzing me about everything-my dirty clothes, the bloody nicks on my arms, why exactly was I sleeping under their bed-I managed to conjure up the tale that I’d had a horrible dream. Hank had drowned! And I had gone to check on him.
   “You were sleepwalkin’!” my mother said in disbelief, and I seized this immediately.
   “I guess,” I said, nodding. Everything after that was a blur-I was dead tired and scared and not sure if what I’d seen at the river had really happened or had in fact been a dream. I was horrified at the thought of ever facing Cowboy again.
   “Ricky used to do that,” Gran added from the hallway. “Caught ‘im one night out past the silo.”
   This helped calm things somewhat. They led me to the kitchen and sat me at the table. My mother scrubbed me while Gran doctored the Johnson grass cuts on my arms. The men saw that matters were under control, so they left to gather eggs and milk.
   A loud thunderstorm hit just as we were about to eat, and the sounds were a great relief to me. We wouldn’t be going to the fields for a few hours. I wouldn’t be near Cowboy.
   They watched me as I picked at my food. “I’m okay,” I said at one point.
   The rain fell heavy and loud onto our tin roof, drowning out conversation so that we ate in silence, the men worrying about the cotton, the women worrying about me.
   I had enough worries to crush us all.
   “Could I finish later?” I asked, slightly shoving my plate away. “I’m really sleepy.”
   My mother decided that I would go back to bed and rest for as long as I needed to. As the women were clearing the table, I whispered to my mother and asked her if she would lie down with me. Of course she would.
   She fell asleep before I did. We were in my parents’ bed, in their semidark bedroom, still and cool and listening to the rain, with the men in the kitchen not far away, drinking coffee and waiting, and I felt safe.
   I wanted it to rain forever. The Mexicans and the Spruills would leave. Cowboy would be shipped home, back to where he could cut and slash all he wanted, and I’d never know about it. And sometime next summer, when plans were made for the harvest, I’d make sure Miguel and his band of Mexicans were not hauled back to our county.
   I wanted my mother next to me, with my father nearby. I wanted to sleep, but when I closed my eyes I saw Hank and Cowboy on the bridge. I was suddenly hopeful that Hank was still there, still in Camp Spruill rummaging for a biscuit, still throwing rocks at the barn at midnight. Then it would all be a dream.

Chapter 26

   I clung to my mother throughout the day, after the storm passed, after lunch, after the rest of them went to the fields and we stayed around the house. There were whispers between my parents and a frown from my father, but she was adamant. There were times when little boys just needed to be with their mothers. I was afraid to let her out of my sight.
   The very thought of telling what I saw on the bridge made me weak. I tried not to think about either the killing or the telling of it, but it was impossible to think of anything else.
   We gathered vegetables from the garden. I followed her with the straw basket, my eyes cutting in all directions, ready for Cowboy to leap from nowhere and slaughter both of us. I could smell him, feel him, hear him. I could see his nasty liquid eyes watching every move we made. The weight of his switchblade on my forehead grew heavier.
   I thought of nothing but him, and I stayed close to my mother.
   “What’s the matter, Luke?” she asked more than once. I was aware that I wasn’t talking, but I couldn’t force words out. There was a faint ringing in my ears. The world was moving slower. I just wanted a place to hide.
   “Nothin’,” I said. Even my voice was different-low and scratchy.
   “You still tired?”
   “Yes ma’am.”
   And I’d be tired for a month if it kept me out of the fields and away from Cowboy.
   We stopped to examine Trot’s house painting. Since we were there and not picking cotton, Trot was nowhere to be seen. If we left the house, then he would return to his project. The east wall now had a white strip about three feet high, running from the front almost to the rear. It was clean and neat, obviously the work of someone who wasn’t burdened with time.
   At his current pace there was no way Trot would finish the house before the Spruills left. What would happen after they left? We couldn’t live in a house with a two-toned east wall.
   I had more important things to worry about.
   My mother decided she would “put up,” or can, some tomatoes. She and Gran spent hours during the summer and early fall putting up vegetables from our garden-tomatoes, peas, beans, okra, mustard greens, and corn. By the first of November the pantry shelves would be packed four-deep with quart jars of food, enough to get us through the winter and early spring. And, of course, they also put up enough for anyone who might need a little help. I was certain that we’d be hauling food to the Latchers in the months to come, now that we were kinfolk.
   The very thought made me furious, but again, I wasn’t worried about the Latchers anymore.
   My job was to peel tomatoes. Once peeled they would be chopped and placed into large pots and cooked just enough to soften them, then packed into Kerr quart jars, with a tablespoon of salt, and secured with new lids. We used the same jars from year to year, but we always bought new lids. A slight leak around the seal and a jar would spoil, and it was always a bad moment during the winter when Gran or my mother opened ajar and its contents couldn’t be eaten. It didn’t happen often.
   Once properly packed and sealed, the jars were placed in a row inside a large pressure cooker half-filled with water. There they would boil for half an hour, under pressure, to remove any remaining air and to further seal the lid. Gran and my mother were very fussy about their canning. It was a source of pride among the women, and I often heard the ladies around the church boast of putting up so many jars of butter beans or of this and that.
   The canning began as soon as the garden started producing. I was forced to help with it occasionally and always hated it. Today was different. Today I was quite happy to be in the kitchen with my mother, with Cowboy out in the fields far away.
   I stood at the kitchen sink with a sharp paring knife, and when I cut the first tomato I thought of Hank on the bridge. The blood, the switchblade, the painful cry with the first cut, then the silent look of horror as other cuts followed. In that first instant, I think Hank knew he was about to be carved up by someone who’d done it before. He knew he was dead.
   My head hit the leg of a kitchen chair. When I awoke on the sofa, my mother was holding ice on a knot above my right ear. She smiled and said, “You fainted, Luke.”
   I tried to say something but my mouth was too dry. She gave me a sip of water and told me I wasn’t going anywhere for a while. “Are you tired?” she asked.
   I nodded and closed my eyes.

   Twice a year the county sent a few loads of gravel to our road. The trucks dumped it, and right behind them a road grader came along and leveled things out. The grader was operated by an old man who lived near Caraway. He had a black patch over one eye, and the left side of his face was scarred and disfigured to the point of making me cringe when I saw it. He’d been injured in the First War, according to Pappy, who claimed to know more about the old man than he was willing to tell. Otis was his name.
   Otis had two monkeys that helped him grade the roads around Black Oak. They were little black things with long tails, and they ran along the frame of the grader, sometimes hopping down on the blade itself, just inches above the dirt and gravel. Sometimes they sat on his shoulder, or on the back of his seat, or on the long rod that ran from the steering wheel to the front end. As Otis motored up and down the road, working the levers, changing the angle and pitch of the blade, spitting tobacco juice, the monkeys jumped and swung without fear and seemed to have a delightful time.
   If, for some dreadful reason, we kids didn’t make it to the Cardinals, many of us wanted to be road grader operators. It was a big, powerful machine under the control of one man, and all those levers had to be worked with such precision-hands and feet moving with great coordination. Plus, level roads were crucial to the farmers of rural Arkansas. Few jobs were more important, at least in our opinion.
   We had no idea what it paid, but we were certain it was more profitable than farming.
   When I heard the diesel engine, I knew Otis was back. I walked hand in hand with my mother to the edge of the road, and sure enough, between our house and the bridge were three mounds of new gravel. Otis was spreading it, slowly working his way toward us. We stepped back under a tree and waited.
   My head was clear, and I felt strong. My mother kept tugging at my shoulder, as if she thought I might faint again. As Otis drew near, I stepped closer to the road. The engine roared; the blade churned up dirt and gravel. We were getting our road fixed, a most important event.
   Sometimes Otis waved, sometimes he did not. I saw his scars and his black eye patch. Oh, the questions I had for that man!
   And I saw only one monkey. He was sitting on the main frame, just beyond the steering wheel, and he looked very sad. I scanned the grader for his little partner, but there were no other monkeys.
   We waved at Otis, who glanced at us but did not wave back. This was a terrible sign of rudeness in our world, but then Otis was different. Because of his war wounds, he had no wife, no children, nothing but isolation.
   Suddenly the grader stopped. Otis turned and looked down at me with his good eye, then motioned for me to climb aboard. I instantly moved toward him, and my mother rushed forward to say no. Otis yelled, “It’s okay! He’ll be fine.” It didn’t matter: I was already climbing up.
   He yanked my hand and pulled me up to the platform where he sat. “Stand here,” he said gruffly, pointing to a little spot next to him. “Hold on here,” he growled, and I clutched a handle next to an important-looking lever that I was terrified to touch. I looked down at my mother, who had her hands on her hips. She was shaking her head as if she could choke me, but then I saw a hint of a smile.
   He hit the throttle, and the engine behind us roared to life. He pushed the clutch with his foot, moved a gearshift, and we were off. I could’ve walked faster, but with the noise from the diesel it seemed as if we were racing along.
   I was on Otis’s left side, very close to his face, and I tried not to look at his scars. After a couple of minutes, he seemed oblivious to my presence. The monkey, however, was quite curious. He watched me as if I were an intruder, then he slinked along on all fours, slowly, prepared to lunge at me at any moment. He jumped onto Otis’s right shoulder, walked around the back of his neck, and settled onto his left shoulder, staring at me.
   I was staring at him. He was no bigger than a baby squirrel, with fine black fur and little black eyes barely separated by the bridge of his nose. His long tail fell down the front of Otis’s shirt. Otis was working the levers, moving the gravel, mumbling to himself, seemingly unaware of the monkey on his shoulder.
   When it was apparent that the monkey was content just to study me, I turned my attention to the workings of the road grader. Otis had the blade down in the shallow ditch, tilted at a steep angle so that mud and grass and weeds were being dug out and shoved into the road. I knew from previous observations that he would go up and down several times, cleaning the ditches, grading the center, spreading the gravel. Pappy was of the opinion that Otis and the county should fix our road more often, but most farmers felt that way.
   He turned the grader around, ran the blade into the other ditch, and headed back toward our house. The monkey hadn’t moved.
   “Where’s the other monkey?” I said loudly, not far from Otis’s ear.
   He pointed down at the blade and said, “Fell off.”
   It took a second for this to register, and then I was horrified at the thought of that poor little monkey falling over the blade and meeting such an awful death. It didn’t seem to bother Otis, but the surviving monkey was undoubtedly mourning the loss of his buddy. He just sat there, sometimes looking at me, sometimes gazing away, very much alone. And he certainly stayed away from the blade.
   My mother hadn’t moved. I waved at her, and she waved at me, and again Otis took no part in any of it. He spat every so often, a long stream of brown tobacco juice that hit the ground in front of the rear wheels. He wiped his mouth with a dirty sleeve, both right and left, depending on which hand happened to be engaged with a lever. Pappy said that Otis was very levelheaded-tobacco juice ran out of both corners of his mouth.
   Past our house I could see, from my lofty position, the cotton trailer in the middle of a field and a few straw hats scattered about. I searched until I found the Mexicans, in the same general area as usual, and I thought of Cowboy out there, switchblade in his pocket, no doubt quite proud of his latest killing. I wondered if he’d told his pals about it. Probably not.
   For a moment I was frightened because my mother was back behind us, alone. This didn’t make any sense, and I knew it, but most of my thoughts were irrational.
   When I saw the tree line along the river, a new fear gripped me. I was suddenly afraid to see the bridge, the scene of the crime. Surely there were bloodstains, evidence that something awful had happened. Did the rain wash them away? Days often went by without a car or truck passing over the bridge. Had anyone seen Hank’s blood? There was a good chance the evidence would be gone.
   Had there really been bloodshed? Or was it all a bad dream?
   Nor did I want to see the river. The water moved slowly this time of the year, and Hank was such a large victim. Could he be ashore by now? Washed up on a gravel bar like a beached whale? I certainly didn’t want to be the one to find him.
   Hank had been cut to pieces. Cowboy had the nearest switchblade and plenty of motive. It was a crime that even Stick Powers could solve.
   I was the only eyewitness, but I’d already decided I would take it to my grave.
   Otis shifted gears and turned around, no small feat with a road grader, as I was learning. I caught a glimpse of the bridge, but we were too far away to see much. The monkey grew weary of staring at me and shifted shoulders. He peeked at me around Otis’s head for a minute or so, then just sat there, perched like an owl, studying the road.
   Oh, if Dewayne could see me now! He’d burn with envy. He’d be humiliated. He’d be so overcome with defeat that he wouldn’t speak to me for a long time. I couldn’t wait for Saturday. I’d spread the word along Main Street that I’d spent the day with Otis on the road grader-Otis and his monkey. Just one monkey, though, and I’d be forced to tell what happened to the other. And all those levers and controls that, from the ground, looked so thoroughly intimidating but in reality were no problem for me at all. I’d learned how to operate them! It would be one of my finest moments.
   Otis stopped in front of our house. I climbed down and yelled, “Thank you!” but he was off without a nod or word of any sort.
   I suddenly thought about the dead monkey, and I started crying. I didn’t want to cry, and I tried not to, but the tears were pouring out, and I couldn’t control myself. My mother came running from the house, asking what was wrong. I didn’t know what was wrong; I was just crying. I was scared and tired, almost faint again, and I just wanted everything to be normal, with the Mexicans and the Spruills out of our lives, with Ricky home, with the Latchers gone, with the nightmare of Hank erased from my memory. I was tired of secrets, tired of seeing things I was not supposed to see.
   And so I just cried.
   My mother held me tightly. When I realized she was frightened, I managed to tell her about the dead monkey.
   “Did you see it?” she asked in horror.
   I shook my head and kept explaining. We walked back to the porch and sat for a long time.

   Hank’s departure was confirmed at some point during the day. Over supper my father said that Mr. Spruill had told him that Hank had left during the night. He was hitchhiking back to their home in Eureka Springs.
   Hank was floating at the bottom of the St. Francis River, and when I thought about him down there with the channel catfish, I lost my appetite. The adults were watching me closer than usual. During the past twenty-four hours I’d fainted, had nightmares, cried several times, and, as far as they knew, gone for a long walk in my sleep. Something was wrong with me, and they were concerned.
   “Wonder if he’ll make it home,” Gran said. This launched a round of stories about folks who’d disappeared. Pappy had a cousin who had been migrating with his family from Mississippi to Arkansas. They were traveling in two old trucks. They came to a railroad crossing. The first truck, the one driven by the cousin in question, crossed first. A train came roaring by, and the second truck waited for it to pass. It was a long train, and when it finally cleared, there was no sign of the first truck on the other side. The second truck crossed and came to a fork in the road. The cousin was never seen again, and that had been thirty years ago. No sign of him or the truck.
   I’d heard this story many times. I knew Gran would go next, and sure enough, she told the tale about her mother’s father, a man who’d sired six kids then hopped on a train and fled to Texas. Someone in the family stumbled across him twenty years later. He had another wife and six more kids.
   “You okay, Luke?” Pappy said when the eating was over. All of his gruffness was gone. They were telling stories for my benefit, trying to amuse me because I had them worried.
   “Just tired, Pappy,” I said.
   “You want to go to bed early?” my mother asked, and I nodded.
   I went to Ricky’s room while they washed the dishes. My letter to him was now two pages long, a monumental effort. It was still in my writing tablet, hidden under the mattress, and it covered most of the Latcher conflict. I read it again and was quite pleased with myself. I toyed with the idea of telling Ricky about Cowboy and Hank, but decided to wait until he came home. By then the Mexicans would be gone, things would be safe again, and Ricky would know what to do.
   I decided that the letter was ready to be mailed, then started worrying about how I might accomplish mailing it. We always sent our letters at the same time, often in the same large manila envelope. I decided that I’d consult with Mr. Lynch Thornton at the post office on Main Street.
   My mother read me the story of Daniel in the lions’ den, one of my favorites. Once the weather broke and the nights became cool, we spent less time on the porch and more time reading before bed. My mother and I read, the others did not. She preferred Bible stories, and this suited me fine. She would read awhile, then explain things. Then read some more. There was a lesson in every story, and she made sure I understood each one. Nothing irritated me more than for Brother Akers to screw up the details in one of his long-winded sermons.
   When I was ready for bed, I asked her if she would stay there, in Ricky’s bed with me, until I fell asleep.
   “Of course I will,” she said.

Chapter 27

   After a day of rest, there was no way my father would tolerate further absence from the fields. He pulled me out of bed at five, and we went about our routine chores of gathering eggs and milk.
   I knew I couldn’t continue to hide in the house with my mother, so I bravely went through the motions of getting ready to pick cotton. I’d have to face Cowboy at some point before he left. It was best to get it over with and to do it with plenty of folks around.
   The Mexicans were walking to the fields, skipping the morning ride on the flatbed trailer. They could start picking a few minutes earlier, plus it kept them away from the Spruills. We left the house just before dawn. I held firm to Pappy’s seat on the tractor and watched my mother’s face slowly disappear in the kitchen window. I’d prayed long and hard the night before, and something told me she would be safe.
   As we made our way along the field road, I studied the John Deere tractor. I’d spent hours on it, plowing, disking, planting, even hauling cotton to town with my father or Pappy, and its operation had always seemed sufficiently complex and challenging. Now, after thirty minutes on the road grader, with its puzzling array of levers and pedals, the tractor seemed quite simple. Pappy just sat there, hands on the wheel, feet still, half-asleep-while Otis had been a study in constant motion-another reason why I should grade roads and not farm if, of course, the baseball career did not work out, a most unlikely event.
   The Mexicans were already half a row down, lost in the cotton and oblivious to our arrival. I knew Cowboy was with them, but in the early light I couldn’t tell one Mexican from the other.
   I avoided him until we broke for lunch. Evidently he’d seen me during the morning, and I guess he figured a little reminder would be appropriate. While the rest of his pals ate leftovers under the shade of the cotton trailer, Cowboy rode in with us. He sat alone on one side of the flatbed, and I ignored him until we were almost to the house.
   When I finally mustered the courage to look at him, he was cleaning his fingernails with his switchblade, and he was waiting for me. He smiled-a wicked grin that conveyed a thousand words-and he gently waved the knife at me. No one else saw it, and I looked away immediately.
   Our agreement had just been solidified even further.
   By late afternoon the cotton trailer was full. After a quick dinner Pappy announced that he and I would haul it to town. We went to the fields and hooked it to the truck, then left the farm on our newly graded road. Otis was quite a craftsman. The road was smooth, even in Pappy’s old truck.
   As usual, Pappy said nothing as he drove, and this was fine with me because I also had nothing to say. Lots of secrets but no way to unload them. We crossed the bridge slowly, and I scanned the thick, slow waters below but saw nothing out of the ordinary-no sign of blood or of the crime I’d witnessed.
   More than a full day had passed since the killing, a normal day of work and drudgery on the farm. I thought about the secret with every breath, but I was masking it well, I thought. My mother was safe, and that was all that mattered.
   We passed the road to the Latchers’, and Pappy glanced their way. For the moment, they were just a minor nuisance.
   On the highway, farther away from the farm, I began to think that one day soon I might be able to unload my burden. I could tell Pappy, alone, just the two of us. Before long Cowboy would be back in Mexico, safe in that foreign world. The Spruills would return home, and Hank wouldn’t be there. I could tell Pappy, and he would know what to do.
   We entered Black Oak behind another trailer and followed it to the gin. When we parked I scrambled out and stuck close to Pappy’s side. Some farmers were huddled just outside the gin office, and a serious discussion had been under way for a while. We walked up on them and listened.
   The news was somber and threatening. The night before, heavy rains had hit Clay County, north of us. Some places reported six inches in ten hours. Clay County was upstream on the St. Francis. The creeks and streams were flooded up there and pouring into the river.
   The water was rising.
   There was a debate as to whether this would affect us. The minority opinion was that the storm would have little impact on the river near Black Oak. We were too far away and, absent more rains, a small rise in the St. Francis wouldn’t flood anything. But the majority view was far more pessimistic, and since the bulk of them were professional worriers anyway, the news was accepted with great concern.
   One farmer said his almanac called for heavy rains in mid-October.
   Another said his cousin in Oklahoma was getting flooded, and since our weather came from the West, he felt it was a sure sign that the rains were inevitable.
   Pappy mumbled something to the effect that the weather from Oklahoma traveled faster than any news.
   There was much debate and lots of opinions, and the overall tone was one of gloom. We’d been beaten so many times by the weather, or by the markets, or by the price of seed and fertilizer, that we expected the worst.
   “We ain’t had a flood in October in twenty years,” declared Mr. Red Fletcher, and this set off a heated debate on the history of autumn floods. There were so many different versions and recollections that the issue was hopelessly confused.
   Pappy didn’t join the fray, and after half an hour of listening we backed away. He unhooked the trailer, and we headed home, in silence, of course. A couple of times I cut my eyes at him and found him just as I expected-mute, worried, driving with both hands, forehead wrinkled, his mind on nothing but the coming flood.
   We parked at the bridge and walked through the mud to the edge of the St. Francis River. Pappy inspected it for a moment as if he might see it rise. I was terrified that Hank would suddenly float to the top and come ashore right in front of us. Without a word, Pappy picked up a stick of driftwood about an inch in diameter and three feet long. He knocked a small limb off it and drove it with a rock into the sandbar where the water was two inches deep. With his pocketknife, he notched it at water level. “We’ll check it in the mornin’,” he said, his first words in a long time.
   We studied our new gauge for a few moments, both certain that we would see the river rise. When it didn’t happen, we returned to the truck.
   The river scared me and not because it might flood. Hank was out there, cut and dead and bloated with river water, ready to wash ashore where someone would find him. We’d have a real murder on our hands, not a just a killing like the Sisco beating, but a genuine slaying.
   The rains would get rid of Cowboy. And the rains would swell the river and move it faster. Hank, or what was left of him, would get swept downstream to another county or maybe even another state where someday someone would find him and not have the slightest clue as to who he was.
   Before I fell asleep that night, I prayed for rain. I prayed as hard as I possibly could. I asked God to send the biggest flood since Noah.
   We were in the middle of breakfast on Saturday morning when Pappy stomped in from the back porch. One look at his face satisfied our curiosity. “River’s up four inches, Luke,” he said to me as he took his seat and began reaching for food. “And there’s lightnin’ to the west.”
   My father frowned but kept chewing. When it came to the weather, he was always pessimistic. If the weather was fine, then it was just a matter of time before it turned bad. If it was bad, then that’s what he’d expected all along. Gran took the news with no expression at all. Her younger son was fighting in Korea, and that was far more important than the next rain. She had never left the soil, and she knew that some years were good, some bad, but life didn’t stop. God gave us life and health and plenty of food, and that was more than most folks could say. Plus, Gran had little patience for all the fretting over the weather. “Can’t do anything about it,” she said over and over.
   My mother didn’t smile or frown, but she had a curious look of contentment. She was determined not to spend her life scratching a meager existence from the land. And she was even more determined that I would not farm. Her days on the farm were numbered, and another lost crop could only hasten our departure.
   By the time we finished eating, we heard thunder. Gran and my mother cleared the dishes, then made another pot of coffee. We sat at the table, talking and listening, waiting to see how rough the storm would be. I thought my prayer was about to be answered, and I felt guilty for such a devious wish.
   But the thunder and lightning moved to the north. No rain fell. By 7 A. M. we were in the fields, picking hard and longing for noon.

   When we left for town, only Miguel hopped in the back of the truck. The rest of the Mexicans were working, he explained, and he needed to buy a few things for them. I was relieved beyond words. I wouldn’t be forced to ride in with Cowboy crouched just a few feet away from me.
   We hit rain at the edge of Black Oak, a cool drizzle instead of a fierce storm. The sidewalks were busy with folks moving slowly under the store canopies and balconies, trying, but failing, to stay dry.
   The weather kept many farm families away from town. This was evident when the four o’clock matinee began at the Dixie theater. Half the seats were empty, a sure sign that it was not a normal Saturday. Halfway through the first show the aisle lights flickered, then the screen went blank. We sat in the darkness, ready to panic and bolt, and listened to the thunder.
   “Power’s out,” said an official voice in the rear. “Please leave slowly.”
   We huddled into the cramped lobby and watched the rain fall in sheets along Main Street. The sky was dark gray, and the few cars that passed by used their headlights.
   Even as kids we knew that there was too much rain, too many storms, too many rumors of rising waters. Floods happened in the spring, rarely during the harvest. In a world where everyone either farmed or traded with farmers, a wet season in mid-October was quite depressing.
   When it slacked off a little, we ran down the sidewalk to find our parents. Heavy rains meant muddy roads, and the town would soon be empty as the farm families left for home before dark. My father had mentioned buying a saw blade, so I ducked into the hardware store in hopes of finding him. It was crowded with people waiting and watching the weather outside. In little pockets of conversation, old men were telling stories of ancient floods. Women were talking about how much rain there’d been in other towns-Paragould, Lepanto, and Manila. The aisles were filled with people who were just talking, not buying or looking for merchandise.
   I worked my way through the crowd, looking for my father. The hardware store was ancient, and toward the rear it became darker and cavern-like. The wooden floors were wet from the traffic and sagged from years of use. At the end of an aisle, I turned and came face-to-face with Tally and Trot. She was holding a gallon of white paint. Trot was holding a quart. They were loitering like everybody else, waiting for the storm to pass. Trot saw me and tried to hide behind Tally. “Hello, Luke,” she said with a smile.
   “Howdy,” I said, looking at the paint bucket. She set it on the floor beside her. “What’s the paint for?”
   “Oh, it’s nothin’,” she said, smiling again. Once again I was reminded that Tally was the prettiest girl I’d ever met, and when she smiled at me my mind went blank. Once you’ve seen a pretty girl naked, you feel a certain attachment to her.
   Trot wedged himself tightly behind her, like a toddler hiding behind his mother. She and I talked about the storm, and I relayed the exciting news about the power going out in the middle of the matinee. She listened with interest, and the more I talked the more I wanted to talk. I told her about the rumors of rising waters and about the gauge Pappy and I had set at the river. She asked about Ricky, and we talked about him for a long time.
   Of course I forgot about the paint.
   The lights flickered, and the power returned. It was still raining, though, and no one left the store.
   “How’s that Latcher girl?” she asked, her eyes darting around as if someone might hear her. It was one of our great secrets.
   I was about to say something, when it suddenly hit me that Tally’s brother was dead, and she knew nothing about it. The Spruills probably thought Hank was home by now, back in Eureka Springs, back in their nice little painted house. They’d see him in a few weeks, sooner if it kept raining. I looked at her and tried to speak, but all I could think about was how shocked she’d be if I said what I was thinking.
   I adored Tally, in spite of her moods and her secrets, in spite of her funny business with Cowboy. I couldn’t help but adore her, and I certainly didn’t want to hurt her. The very thought of blurting out that Hank was dead made me weak in the knees.
   I stuttered and stammered and looked at the floor. I was suddenly cold and scared. “See you later,” I managed to say, then turned and backtracked to the front.
   During a break in the rain, the stores emptied and folks scurried along the sidewalks, heading for the cars and trucks. The clouds were still dark, and we wanted to get home before the showers hit again.

Chapter 28

   Sunday was gray and overcast, and my father didn’t care for the notion of getting wet while riding in the back of the truck on the way to church. Plus, our truck was not exactly waterproof, and the women usually got dripped on while riding in the cab during a good shower. We rarely missed a Sunday worship, but the threat of rain occasionally kept us at home. We hadn’t missed a service in months, and so when Gran suggested we eat a late breakfast and listen to the radio we quickly agreed. Bellevue Baptist was the largest church in Memphis, and its services were broadcast on station WHBQ. Pappy didn’t like the preacher, said he was too liberal, but we enjoyed hearing him nonetheless. And the choir had a hundred voices, which was about eighty more than the one at the Black Oak Baptist Church.
   Long after breakfast, we sat at the kitchen table, sipping coffee (myself included), listening to a sermon being delivered to a congregation of three thousand members, and worrying about the drastic change in the weather. The adults were worrying; I was only pretending.
   Bellevue Baptist had an orchestra, of all things, and when it played the benediction, Memphis seemed a million miles away. An orchestra in a church. Gran’s older daughter, my aunt Betty, lived in Memphis, and though she didn’t worship at Bellevue she knew someone who did. All the men wore suits. All the families drove nice cars. It was indeed a different world.
   Pappy and I drove to the river to check our gauge. The rains were taking a toll on Otis’s recent grade work. The shallow ditches beside the road were full, gullies were forming from the runoff, and mud holes were holding water. We stopped in the middle of the bridge and studied the river on both sides. Even I could tell the water was up. The sandbars and gravel bars were covered. The water was thicker and a lighter shade of brown, evidence of drainage from the creeks that ran through the fields. The current swirled and was moving faster. Debris-driftwood and logs and even a green branch or twofloated atop the water.
   Our gauge was still standing, but barely. Just a few inches remained above the water. Pappy had to get his boots wet to retrieve the stick. He pulled it up, examined it as if it had done something wrong, and said, almost to himself, “Up ‘bout ten inches in twenty-four hours.” He squatted and tapped the stick on a rock. Watching him, I became aware of the noise of the river. It wasn’t loud, but the water was rushing by and streaming over the gravel bars and against the bridge piers. The current splashed through the thick shrubs hanging over the banks and pecked away at the roots of a nearby willow tree. It was a menacing noise. One I’d never heard.
   Pappy was hearing it all too well. With the stick he pointed at the bend in the river, far to the right, and said, “It’ll get the Latchers first. They’re on low ground.”
   “When?” I asked.
   “Depends on the rain. If it stops, then it might not flood at all. Keeps rainin’ though, and it’ll be over the banks in a week.”
   “When’s the last time it flooded?”
   “Three years ago, but that was in the spring. Last fall flood was a long time ago.”
   I had plenty of questions about floods, but it was not a subject Pappy liked to dwell on. We studied the river for a while, and listened to it, then we walked back to the truck and drove home.
   “Let’s go to Siler’s Creek,” he said. The field roads were too muddy for the truck, so Pappy fired up the John Deere, and we pulled out of the farmyard with most of the Spruills and all of the Mexicans watching us with great curiosity. The tractor was never operated on Sunday. Surely Eli Chandler was not about to work on the Sabbath.
   The creek had been transformed. Gone were the clear waters where Tally liked to bathe. Gone were the cool little rivulets running around rocks and logs. Instead the creek was much wider and filled with muddy water rushing to the St. Francis, half a mile away. We got off the tractor and walked to the bank. “This is where our floods come from,” Pappy said. “Not the St. Francis. The ground’s lower here, and when the creek runs over, it heads straight for our fields.”
   The water was at least ten feet below us, still safely contained in the ravine that had been cut through our farm decades earlier. It seemed impossible that the creek could ever rise high enough to escape.
   “You think it’ll flood, Pappy?” I asked.
   He thought long and hard, or maybe he wasn’t thinking at all. He watched the creek and finally said, with no conviction whatsoever, “No. We’ll be fine.”
   There was thunder to the west.

   I walked into the kitchen early Monday morning, and Pappy was at the table, drinking coffee, fiddling with the radio. He was trying to pick up a station in Little Rock to check on the weather. Gran was at the stove, frying bacon. The house was cold, but the heat and smell from the skillet warmed things considerably. My father handed me an old flannel coat, a hand-me-down from Ricky, and I reluctantly put it on.
   “We pickin’ today, Pappy?” I asked.
   “We’ll know directly,” he said, without taking his eyes off the radio.
   “Did it rain last night?” I asked Gran, who had leaned over to kiss my forehead.
   “All night long,” she said. “Now go fetch some eggs.”
   I followed my father out of the house, down the back steps, until I saw something that stopped me cold. The sun was barely up, but there was plenty of light. There was no mistake in what I was seeing.
   I pointed and managed to say only, “Look.”
   My father was ten steps away, heading for the chicken coops. “What is it, Luke?” he asked.
   In the spot under the oak tree where Pappy had parked his truck every day of my life, the ruts were bare. The truck was gone.
   “The truck,” I said.
   My father walked slowly to my side, and for a long time we stared at the parking spot. The truck had always been there, forever, like one of the oaks or one of the sheds. We saw it every day, but we didn’t notice it because it was always there.
   Without a word, he turned and walked up the back steps, across the porch, and into the kitchen. “Any reason why the truck would be gone?” he asked Pappy, who was trying desperately to hear a scratchy report from some faraway place. Gran froze and cocked her head sideways as if she needed the question repeated. Pappy turned the radio off. “Say what?” he said.
   “The truck’s gone,” my father said.
   Pappy looked at Gran, who looked at my father. They all looked at me as if I’d once again done something wrong. About this time my mother entered the kitchen, and the entire family marched single file out of the house and right up to the muddy ruts where the truck should’ve been.
   We searched the farm, as if the truck could have somehow moved itself to another location.
   “I left it right here,” Pappy said in disbelief. Of course he’d left it right there. The truck had never been left overnight anywhere else on the farm.
   In the distance Mr. Spruill yelled, “Tally!”
   “Somebody took our truck,” Gran said, barely audible.
   “Where was the key?” my father asked.
   “By the radio, same as always,” Pappy said. There was a small pewter bowl at the end of the kitchen table, next to the radio, and the truck key was always left there. My father went to inspect the bowl. He returned promptly and said, “The key’s gone.”
   “Tally!” Mr. Spruill yelled again, louder. There was a flurry of activity in and around the Spruills’ camp. Mrs. Spruill emerged and began walking quickly toward our front porch. When she saw us standing beside the house, gawking at the empty parking space, she ran over and said, “Tally’s gone. We can’t find her nowhere.”
   The other Spruills were soon behind her, and before long the two families were looking at each other. My father explained that our truck was missing. Mr. Spruill explained that his daughter was missing.
   “Can she drive a truck?” Pappy asked.
   “No, she can’t,” Mrs. Spruill said, and this complicated matters.
   There was silence for a moment as everybody pondered the situation.
   “You don’t suppose Hank could’ve come back and got it, do you?” Pappy asked.
   “Hank wouldn’t steal your truck,” Mr. Spruill said with a mix of anger and confusion. At that moment almost anything seemed both likely and impossible.
   “Hank’s home by now,” Mrs. Spruill said. She was on the verge of tears.
   I wanted to scream, “Hank’s dead!” and then run into the house and hide under a bed. Those poor people didn’t know their son would never make it home. This secret was becoming too heavy to carry alone. I took a step behind my mother.
   She leaned close to my father and whispered, “Better go check on Cowboy.” Because I had told her about Tally and Cowboy, my mother was ahead of the rest of them.
   My father thought for a second, then looked in the direction of the barn. So did Pappy, Gran, and finally the rest of the group.
   Miguel was slowly making his way to us, taking his time, leaving tracks in the wet grass. His dirty straw hat was in his hand, and he walked in such a way that made me think that he had no desire to do whatever he was about to do.
   “Mornin’, Miguel,” Pappy said, as if the day was off to the same old beginning.
   “Senor,” he said, nodding.
   “Is there a problem?” Pappy asked.
   “Si, senor. A little problem.”
   “What is it?”
   “Cowboy is gone. I think he sneaked away in the night.”
   “Must be contagious,” Pappy mumbled, then spat into the grass. It took a few seconds for the Spruills to add things together. At first Tally’s disappearance had nothing to do with Cowboy’s, at least to them. Evidently they knew nothing about the couple’s secret little romance. The Chandlers figured things out long before the Spruills, but then we had the benefit of my inside knowledge.
   Reality slowly settled in.
   “You think he took her?” Mr. Spruill said, almost in panic. Mrs. Spruill was sniffling now, trying to hold back her tears.
   “I don’t know what to think,” Pappy said. He was much more concerned with his pickup than with the whereabouts of Tally and Cowboy.
   “Did Cowboy take his things with him?” my father asked Miguel.
   “Si, senor.”
   “Did Tally take her things with her?” my father asked Mr. Spruill.
   He didn’t answer, and the question hung in the air until Bo said, “Yes sir. Her bag’s gone.”
   “What’s in her bag?”
   “Clothes and such. And her money jar.”
   Mrs. Spruill cried harder. Then she wailed, “Oh my baby!” I wanted to crawl under the house.
   The Spruills were a beaten bunch. All heads were down, shoulders shrunk, eyes half-closed. Their beloved Tally had run away with someone they considered low-bred, a dark-skinned intruder from a godforsaken country. Their humiliation before us was complete, and very painful.
   I was hurting, too. How could she have done such a terrible thing?
   She was my friend. She treated me like a confidant, and she protected me like a big sister. I loved Tally, and now she had run off with a vicious killer.
   “He took her!” Mrs. Spruill bawled. Bo and Dale led her away, leaving only Trot and Mr. Spruill to tend to the matter. Trot’s normally vacant look had been replaced with one of great confusion and sadness. Tally had been his protector, too. Now she was gone.
   The men launched into a windy discussion of what to do next. The top priority was to find Tally, and the truck, before she could get too far. There was no clue as to when the two left. They had obviously used the storm to cover their getaway. The Spruills had heard nothing during the night, nothing but thunder and rain, and the driveway passed within eighty feet of their tents.
   They could’ve been gone for hours, certainly enough time to drive to Jonesboro or Memphis or even Little Rock.
   But the men seemed optimistic that Tally and Cowboy could be found, and quickly. Mr. Spruill left to unhitch his truck from the tents and tables. I begged my father to let me go with them, but he said no. Then I went to my mother, and she held firm, too. “It’s not your place,” she said.
   Pappy and my father squeezed into the front seat with Mr. Spruill, and off they went, sliding on our road, tires spinning, mud slinging behind them.
   I went past the silo to the weedy remains of an old smoke shed and sat for an hour under the rotted tin roof, watching rain drip in front of me. I was relieved that Cowboy had left our farm, and for this I thanked God in a short but sincere prayer. But any relief in his departure was overshadowed by my disappointment in Tally. I managed to hate her for what she had done. I cursed her, using words Ricky had taught me, and when I had spewed forth all the foul language I could remember, I asked God to forgive me.
   And I asked Him to protect Tally.

   It took the men two hours to find Stick Powers. He said he’d been en route from headquarters in Jonesboro, but Pappy said he looked as if he’d been sleeping for a week. Stick was plainly thrilled to have such a high crime within his jurisdiction. Stealing the truck of a farmer was only a notch below murder in our code, and Stick kicked into high gear. He radioed every jurisdiction he could pick up on his old radio, and before long most of northeast Arkansas was buzzing with the news.
   According to Pappy, Stick was not too worried about Tally’s whereabouts. He guessed correctly that she had voluntarily run off with a Mexican, which was a low-class and disgraceful thing to do, but not exactly a felony, even though Mr. Spruill kept using the word “kidnapping.”
   It was doubtful that the two lovebirds would venture a long journey in our truck. They most certainly wanted to flee Arkansas, and Stick reasoned that their most likely means would be by bus. They would be too suspicious as hitchhikers; Arkansas drivers were not likely to pick up such a swarthy character as Cowboy, especially with a young white girl at his side. “They’re probably on a bus headed North,” Stick said.
   When Pappy told us this, I remembered Tally’s dream of living in Canada, a long way from the heat and humidity. She wanted lots of snow, and for some reason she had chosen Montreal as her place in the world.
   The men discussed money. My father did the math and guessed that Cowboy had earned close to four hundred dollars picking cotton. No one knew, though, how much he’d sent home. Tally had earned about half that much and had probably saved most of it. We knew she’d been buying house paint for Trot, but we had no idea of her other expenditures.
   It was at this point in Pappy’s narrative that I wanted to bare my soul about Hank. Cowboy had robbed him after he killed him. There was no way of knowing how much picking money Hank had saved, but I knew for certain that there was $250 of Samson’s money now in Cowboy’s pocket. I almost blurted this out as we sat around the kitchen table, but I was simply too frightened. Cowboy was gone, but they might catch him somewhere.
   Wait, I kept telling myself. Just wait. The moment will come when I can unload my burdens.
   Whatever their finances, it was obvious that Tally and Cowboy had enough money to ride a bus for a long time.
   And we were broke, as usual. There was a brief conversation about how to replace the truck in the event that it was never found, but the subject was too painful to pursue. Plus, I was listening.
   We ate an early lunch, then sat on the back porch and watched the rain.

Chapter 29

   Stick’s old, loud patrol car came rolling into the front yard, with our stolen truck right behind it. Stick got out, full of importance because he’d solved the most urgent part of the crime. Black Oak’s other deputy was driving the truck, which, as far as we could tell, had not changed at all. The Spruills ran over, anxious for some word about Tally.
   “Found it at the bus station in Jonesboro,” Stick announced as the small crowd gathered around him. “Just like I figured.”
   “Where was the key?” asked Pappy.
   “Under the seat. And the tank’s full of gas. Don’t know if it was full when they left here, but it’s full now.”
   “It was half empty,” Pappy said, astonished. We were all surprised, not only to see the truck again but to see it unchanged in any way. We’d spent the day worrying about a future with no truck, with no means of transportation. We’d be in the same boat as the Latchers, forced to bum rides to town from anybody passing by. I couldn’t imagine such a plight, and I was now more determined than ever to someday live in a city where folks had cars.
   “I guess they just borrowed it,” Mr. Spruill said, almost to himself.
   “That’s the way I see it,” Stick said. “You still want to press charges?” he asked Pappy.
   He and my father exchanged frowns. “I guess not,” Pappy said.
   “Did anybody see them?” Mrs. Spruill asked quietly.
   “Yes ma’am. They bought two tickets for Chicago, then hung around the bus station for five hours. The clerk knew somethin’ was up, but figured it wasn’t his business. Runnin’ off with a Mexican ain’t the smartest thing in the world, but it ain’t no crime. The clerk said he watched them through the night, and they tried to ignore each other as if nothin’ was happenin’. They wouldn’t sit together. But when the bus loaded they got on together.”
   “What time did the bus leave?” Mr. Spruill asked.
   “Six this mornin’.” Stick removed a folded envelope from his pocket and handed it to Mr. Spruill. “Found this on the front seat. I think it’s a note from Tally to y’all. I ain’t read it.”
   Mr. Spruill handed it to Mrs. Spruill, who quickly opened it and removed a sheet of paper. She started reading, and she began wiping her eyes. Everybody watched her, waiting without a sound. Even Trot, who was hiding behind Bo and Dale, leaned forward and watched the letter being read.
   “Ain’t none o’ my business, ma’am,” Stick said, “but if there’s any useful information, then maybe I need to know.”
   Mrs. Spruill kept reading, and when she finished, she looked at the ground and said, “She says she ain’t comin’ home. She says she and Cowboy are gonna get married and live up North, where they can find good jobs and such.” The tears and sniffles had suddenly vanished. Mrs. Spruill was now more angry than anything else. Her daughter hadn’t been kidnapped; she’d run off with a Mexican, and she was going to marry him.
   “They gonna stay in Chicago?” Stick asked.
   “Don’t say. Just says up North.”
   The Spruills began drifting away, backpedaling in retreat. My father thanked Stick and the other deputy for bringing our truck home.
   “You’re gettin’ more rain than most folks,” Stick said as he opened the door to his patrol car.
   “It’s wet all over,” Pappy shot back.
   “River’s risin’ to the north,” Stick said, as if he were an expert. “More rain’s on the way.”
   “Thanks, Stick,” Pappy said.
   Stick and the other deputy got into the patrol car, Stick settling himself behind the wheel. Just as he was about to close the door he jumped out and said, “Say, Eli, I called the sheriff up at Eureka Springs. He ain’t seen the big one, Hank. The boy shoulda been home by now, don’t you think?”
   “I reckon. He left a week ago.”
   “Wonder where he is?”
   “Ain’t none of my concern,” Pappy said.
   “I ain’t through with him, you know. When I find him, I’m gonna put his big ass in the jail in Jonesboro, and we’re gonna have us a trial.”
   “You do that, Stick,” Pappy said, then turned around. “You do that.”
   Stick’s bald tires slipped and spun in the mud, but he finally got to the road. My mother and Gran returned to the kitchen to start cooking.
   Pappy got his tools and spread them on the tailgate of the truck. He opened the hood and began a thorough inspection of the engine I sat on the fender, handing him wrenches, watching every move.
   “Why would a nice girl like Tally want to marry a Mexican?” I asked.
   Pappy was tightening a fan belt. There was little doubt that Cowboy hadn’t bothered to stop, open the hood, and meddle with the engine while he was fleeing with Tally, but Pappy nonetheless was compelled to adjust and fix and tinker as if the vehicle had been sabotaged. “Women,” he said.
   “What do you mean?”
   “Women do stupid things.”
   I waited for clarification, but his answer was complete.
   “I don’t understand,” I finally said.
   “Neither do I. Neither will you. You’re not supposed to understand women.”
   He removed the air filter and gazed with suspicion at the carburetor. For a moment it looked as if he’d found evidence of tampering, but then he turned a screw and seemed content.
   “You think they’ll ever find her?” I asked.
   “They ain’t lookin’. We got the truck back, so there’s no crime, no police tryin’ to find ‘em. I doubt if the Spruills’ll go look for ‘em. Why bother? If they got lucky and found ‘em, what’re they gonna do?”
   “Can’t they make her come home?”
   “No. Once she gets married, then she’s an adult. You can’t make a married woman do a damned thing.”
   He cranked the engine and listened to it idle. It sounded the same to me, but Pappy thought he heard a new rattle. “Let’s take it for spin,” he said. Wasting gasoline was a sin in Pappy’s book, but he seemed anxious to burn a little of the free stuff Tally and Cowboy had left behind.
   We got in and backed onto the road. I was sitting where Tally had been, just hours earlier, when they’d sneaked away during the storm. I thought of nothing but her, and I was as bewildered as ever.
   The road was too wet and muddy to allow Pappy to reach his perfect speed of thirty-seven miles an hour, but he still thought he could tell that something was wrong with the engine. We stopped at the bridge and looked at the river. The gravel bars and sandbars were gone; there was nothing but water between the banks-water and debris from upriver. It rushed by, faster than I had ever seen it. Pappy’s stick, his flood gauge, was long gone, washed away by the swirling currents. We didn’t need it to tell us that the St. Francis was about to flood.
   Pappy seemed mesmerized by the water and its noise. I couldn’t tell if he wanted to curse or cry. Neither would’ve helped, of course, and I think that Pappy, for perhaps the first time, realized he was about to lose another crop.
   Whatever was wrong with the engine had fixed itself by the time we returned home. Pappy announced over supper that the truck was as good as ever, whereupon we launched into a long and creative discussion about Tally and Cowboy and where they might be and what they might be doing. My father had heard that there were a lot of Mexicans up in Chicago, and he guessed that Cowboy and his new bride would simply blend into that vast city and never be seen again.
   I was so worried about Tally that I could barely force down my food.

   Late the next morning, with the sun trying its best to peek through the clouds, we returned to the fields to pick cotton. We were tired of sitting around the house watching the skies. Even I wanted to go to the fields.
   The Mexicans were especially anxious to work. They were, after all, two thousand miles from home and not getting paid.
   But the cotton was too wet and the ground was too soft. Mud caked on my boots, and it stuck to my picking sack, so that after an hour I felt as if I were dragging a tree trunk. We quit after two hours and left for the house, a sad and dispirited group.
   The Spruills had had enough. It came as no surprise to see them breaking camp. They did so slowly, as if they were only reluctantly admitting defeat. Mr. Spruill told Pappy that there was no use in their staying if they couldn’t work. They were tired of the rains and we couldn’t blame them. They’d been camping out for six weeks in our front yard. Their old tents and tarps were sagging under the weight of all the rain. The mattresses they slept on were half-exposed to the weather and splattered with mud. I would’ve left a long time before.
   We sat on the porch and watched them gather their junk and pack it all haphazardly into the truck and trailer. There would be more room now with Hank and Tally gone.
   I was suddenly frightened by their leaving. They would be home soon, and Hank wouldn’t be there. They would wait, then search, then start asking questions. I wasn’t sure if and how this might one day affect me, but I was scared just the same.
   My mother forced me into the garden, where we gathered enough food for twenty people. We washed the corn, cucumbers, tomatoes, okra, and greens in the kitchen sink, then she carefully arranged it all in a cardboard box. Gran put together a dozen eggs, two pounds of country ham, a pound of butter, and two quart jars of strawberry preserves. The Spruills would not leave without food for the trip.
   By mid-afternoon they had finished packing. Their truck and trailer were hopelessly overloaded-boxes and burlap sacks clung to the sides, loosely secured by baling wire and destined to fall off. When it was apparent they were about to leave, we walked as a family down the front steps and across the yard to say our farewells. Mr. and Mrs. Spruill met us and accepted our food. They apologized for leaving before the cotton was picked, but we all knew there was a good chance the crops were finished anyway. They tried to smile and be gracious, but their pain was obvious. Watching them, I couldn’t help but think that they would always regret the day they decided to work on our farm. If they had picked another one, Tally wouldn’t have met Cowboy. And Hank might still be alive, though given his lust for violence he was probably doomed to an early death. “He who lives by the sword dies by the sword,” Gran was fond of quoting.
   I felt guilty about all the evil thoughts I’d held against them. And I felt like a thief because I knew the truth about Hank, and they didn’t.
   I said good-bye to Bo and Dale, neither of whom had much to say. Trot was hiding behind the trailer. As the farewells were winding down, he shuffled toward me and mumbled something I did not understand. Then he stuck out his hand and offered me his paintbrush. I had no choice but to take it.
   The exchange was witnessed by the adults, and for a moment nothing was said.
   “Over here,” Trot grunted, and he pointed to their truck. Bo took the cue and reached for something just inside the tailgate. He pulled forward a gallon of white enamel, a clean unopened bucket with a bright Pittsburgh Paint logo across the front. He set it on the ground in front of me, then produced another one.
   “It’s for you,” Trot said.
   I looked at the two gallons of paint, then I looked at Pappy and Gran. Though the house painting had not been discussed in days, we had known for some time that Trot would never finish the project. Now he was passing the job to me. I glanced at my mother and saw a curious smile on her lips.
   “Tally bought it,” Dale said.
   I tapped the brush on my leg and finally managed to say, “Thanks.” Trot gave me a goofy grin, which made the rest of them smile. Once again they headed toward their truck, but this time they managed to get in. Trot was in the trailer, alone now. Tally had been with him when we first saw them. He looked sad and deserted.
   Their truck started with great reluctance. The clutch whined and scraped, and when it finally released, the entire assemblage lurched forward. The Spruills were off, pots and pans rattling, boxes shaking from side to side, Bo and Dale bouncing on a mattress, and Trot curled into a corner of the trailer, bringing up the rear. We waved until they were out of sight.
   There’d been no talk of next year. The Spruills were not coming back. We knew we’d never see them again.
   What little grass was left in the front yard had been flattened, and when I surveyed the damage I was instantly glad they were gone. I kicked the ashes where they’d built their fires on home plate and once again marveled at how insensitive they’d been. There were ruts from their truck and holes from their tent poles. Next year I’d put up a fence to keep hill people off my baseball field.
   My immediate project, however, was to finish what Trot had begun. I hauled the paint to the front porch, one gallon at a time, and was surprised by the weight. I was expecting Pappy to say something, but the situation drew no comment from him. My mother, however, gave some orders to my father, who quickly erected a scaffold on the east side of the house. It was a two-by-six oak plank, eight feet long, braced by a sawhorse on one end and an empty diesel drum on the other. It tilted slightly toward the drum, but not enough to unbalance the painter. My father opened the first gallon, stirred it with a stick, and helped me onto the scaffold. There were some brief instructions, but since he knew so little about house painting I was let loose to learn on my own. I figured if Trot could do it, so could I.
   My mother watched me carefully and offered such wisdom as “Don’t let it drip” and “Take your time.” On the east side of the house, Trot had painted the first six boards from the bottom, from the front of the house to the rear, and with my scaffold I was able to reach another three feet above his work. I wasn’t sure how I would paint up to the roof, but I decided I would worry about it later.
   The old boards soaked up the first layer of paint. The second one went on smooth and white. After a few minutes I was fascinated by my work because the results were immediate.
   “How am I doin’?” I asked without looking down.
   “It’s beautiful, Luke,” my mother said. “Just work slow, and take your time. And don’t fall.”
   “I’m not gonna fall.” Why did she always warn me against dangers that were so obvious?
   My father moved the scaffold twice that afternoon, and by supper-time I had used an entire gallon of paint. I washed my hands with lye soap, but the paint was stuck to my fingernails. I didn’t care. I was proud of my new craft. I was doing something no Chandler had ever done.
   The house painting was not mentioned over supper. Weightier matters were at hand. Our hill people had packed up and left, and they had done so with a large amount of the cotton still unpicked. There had been no rumors of other workers leaving because of wet fields. Pappy didn’t want folks to know we were yielding anything to the rains. The weather was about to change, he insisted. We’d never had so many storms this late in the year.
   At dusk we moved to the front porch, which was now even quieter. The Cardinals were a distant memory, and we rarely listened to anything else after supper. Pappy didn’t want to waste electricity so I sat on the steps and looked out at our front yard, still and empty. For six weeks it had been covered with all manner of shelter and storage. Now there was nothing.
   A few leaves dropped and scattered across the yard. The night was cool and clear, and this prompted my father to predict that tomorrow would be a fine opportunity to pick cotton for twelve hours. All I wanted to do was paint.