A Far Piece to Canaan (2 page)

“What are the people around here like, Nate?” Dad asked, looking past Mom, who was sitting between him and Mr. Berman.

“Like the goyim you knew in Bourbon County, maybe a little more meshuga,” Mr. Berman answered, meaning they were Christian and a little crazy.

“Meshuga?” said Mom, straightening up, and I knew her eyes were wide in her round, chubby face. “What do you mean, meshuga?”

“Nothing bad,” said Mr. Berman, laughing. “It's just that they're full of superstitions. Like when I was buying this place in January; the first time I came to look at it, there were maybe twenty people in the yard. A tall goy with a wild look in his eyes was shouting at the others about evil and floating Bibles in the river.”

“Floating Bibles? Why?” Mom asked, a little scared.

Mr. Berman laughed again. “I don't know. The meeting broke up with some shouting. Since I was a stranger I didn't ask questions. It's a
bobbeh meisseh
.” Grandmother's tale.

That scared me. I could see that my sister Naomi, who was sitting beside me, was worried too. Mom turned toward Dad, who was laughing.

“Morris, what do you think it means?”

“Nothing,” said Dad, turning toward her. “There were nutty people around Moneybags' place too.” Then he looked at Mr. Berman. “Nate, what shape's that tobacco barn in?”

“Good shape,” said Mr. Berman. “Throw on a few shingles, it's good as new.”

As the barns got closer you could see the roof of the tobacco barn was about gone.

“Few shingles, huh?” Dad muttered, and Mr. Berman just kept driving quiet.

Mom didn't say anything either, but I could see her face in the rearview mirror.

Her lips were pursed and she had pulled her arms together under her big chest. She was acting like she hadn't gotten over that stuff about evil and floating Bibles. Even though Dad didn't think much of it, it bothered me that Mom seemed worried.

We come around a curve in the lane and there stood a white frame house with a big yard that had a thick kind of wire fence around it that folks in our parts called road wire. The gravel lane kept curving until it ended in a muddy stock barn lot. Mr. Berman veered off before he got to the barnyard gate and parked just outside the road wire fence.

The yard was full of trees that didn't have leaves yet but you could tell they were going to shade everything soon as they come out. There was a rock path that led to a big screened-in porch which had about half its screen rusted out. Next to the yard was an orchard and I knew one of the trees was a cherry. I loved cherries.

There were lots of buildings you could see from the front yard. From where Mr. Berman parked, the field sloped down to a deep hollow with a creek at the bottom. On top of the other slope of the hollow, three, four hundred foot from us, was a tobacco barn. A corncrib and sheep barn were strung out after it like the navy ships I saw in picture shows, the buildings all creosoted black with shingle roofs. On down the hollow from the sheep barn, maybe another quarter mile, was a hired hand's house. I knew it was empty because no smoke was coming out of the chimney. It was pretty though, nestled below a big hill that was shaped like a volcano with the creek in the hollow running maybe fifty foot from the front porch.

The house we were renting had electric lights and a telephone. We'd never had those before. The kitchen was just like what we had at Moneybags', with a peeling linoleum floor, a place for a cooking stove, and a big pantry. Behind the kitchen stove was a wood bin we could use for coal. We always burned coal even though most folks around us burned wood. I figured Jews had to burn coal to set them apart from the goyim. Out back was a yard with a chicken house. It had a flat rock path to it that went on past the chicken house and ended at an outhouse.

I was with Mom and Naomi in the kitchen when I noticed Dad and Mr. Berman talking in the kitchen yard. I went out through the kitchen's screened-in porch to get close so I could hear, figuring they were talking about renting and that I'd be doing it someday and had better learn how. Dad was leaning against the fence that separated the kitchen yard from the barnyard. Next to Mr. Berman, Dad looked big, all muscled up in his Levi's with his red flannel coat unbuttoned and light blue work shirt open at the neck. Mr. Berman was wearing a brown suit and looked like a pear with legs.

“Nobody rents money rent these days, Morris,” Mr. Berman was saying. “It's share or nothing,” and he looked away from Dad toward the stock barn.

Dad nodded. “What kind of deal you offering?”

“Same as you had on Coachman's.”

“Fifty-fifty on the tobacco?”

“Yes.”

Dad's lips squenched together. “What about the fertilizer and labor and all?”

Mr. Berman's face went hard. “You paid it at Coachman's, didn't you?”

“Yeah. Moneybags wasn't fair either. You got fourteen acres of burley, Nate. I can't do all that myself. Payin' help will take a lot of my share. Why don't we split fifty-fifty on that?”

Mr. Berman's face stayed hard. “Because that's not what people do here, Morris.”

Dad's mouth squenched harder. “What about the livestock?”

“You can have every third lamb.”

“Every other.”

“No.”

“What about the cattle?”

“You can pasture your livestock, raise hogs, and chickens, but everything else is shares.”

Dad looked toward Mom and Naomi, who were walking across the yard toward another part of the fence. The last tenant had made a garden there. I could see beehives too.

“What about the garden and honey?” Dad asked.

“Shares. Everything but what we've agreed on is shares.”

Dad turned back to face Mr. Berman. “You got a hired hand can help me?”

“Yeah, there's some white trash named Mulligan on the other side of the place. You can hire him when he isn't working for me. The other tenant house is empty.”

They stood there for a while, Mr. Berman looking at the barn and Dad looking at him. Then Mr. Berman turned. He was the shorter, but, somehow, he kind of looked down at Dad.

“That's the deal, Morris. You won't find a better one.”

“I don't know about that,” said Dad, giving a little short laugh.

“Well, that's the deal. It's getting late for renting. I got to know tomorrow.”

“Yeah, well, I'll talk it over with Liz and let you know,” Dad grumbled.

Mr. Berman walked back to his car taking care not to get his fancy shoes and suit dirty, and sat listening to the radio about how the Allies were capturing some town. Mom and Dad talked in whispers in the yard and I was close enough to hear them.

The wind blew strands of Mom's red-gray hair across her face and she pulled the top of her blue coat tighter around her neck. “Well, what did he say?”

I could see Dad's jaw muscles work. “Says he'll give me what he would any goy.”

“Morris, we have to have a place, but I'm worried about the people around here.”

Dad kind of snorted. “I'm less worried about the neighbors than the rotten deal Berman is offering. The tobacco base is big though, and with a little luck, we can make some money.”

“Morris, I don't like this place. We've never lived among hill people.”

“M'dom, twenty-five years ago when we first started farming, you'd never been out of New York City. You were worried about everyone around us, remember? Over the years, they became our best friends.”

“I know, but they were nice country people, not a bunch of superstitious hillbillies.”

“That's not what you thought then.”

Mom looked up into Dad's face. “You're not worried then?”

“About the Bible stuff?” Dad said with a laugh. “M'dom, they're just like the greenhorns from the old country. They're ignorant and superstitious, but they're not bad.”

Mom looked away, then back into Dad's face. “Morris, I don't like religious fanatics around the children. They're always looking for evil. And I don't know what they think about Jews. Samuel is just at an age where they can scare him into thinking all sorts of things.”

Dad shook his head. “I don't think we should turn it down for that kind of reason.”

Mom stood quiet for a minute, then sighed. “I guess you're right. The house has electricity and a telephone, and it can be made nice. Maybe we should try it for a year.”

Dad nodded and gazed around. “There's so much work here. There's fourteen acres of burley, and every boy old enough to work's been drafted. We'll have to swap work where we can. It's gonna be tough, M'dom. It would be tough for people of thirty, much less fifty.”

Mom squeezed Dad's arm and smiled up at him. “When did work ever scare you?”

I looked around at everything then, because when I heard Mom say that, I knew this was going to be home.

I
t was several days before we got the house cleaned up. I got out to the stock barn once, working my way through its muddy barnyard. To the right of the barn was a big gate which opened into a hog lot. The cobs from the corn they were fed had kept the lot dry.

The barn was creosote black and had two tall red doors that met in the middle. They were supposed to slide, but were part off the track and I had to wriggle through. It was a pretty nice barn. It had a big hayloft and a feed room that was also used for horse gear. I passed half a dozen pens until I got to the back doors. They were off their slides too, but I shoved one out until I could squeeze through and get a look.

What I saw was a long, narrow field with a little pond at the bottom. The ground run up from the pond onto the big hill that looked like a volcano. I was about to push on through when I heard a noise and looked that way. A boy was sitting on top of one of the two wooden gates that opened into other fields. We just kind of stared at each other.

“Hidey,” he said.

“'Lo,” I answered.

“What's your name?”

“Samuel Zelinsky.”

I waited for him to say his name but he didn't, so I stayed put, moving the buttons of my mackinaw back and forth against the barn door. He was skinny like me and about my size, but looked a year or two older, with a long face, a regular nose, and straight black hair. It was cold but he wudn't wearing a coat, making do with three or four raggedy shirts. A Bull Durham sack with a yellow purse string stuck out of one shirt pocket. Socks and toes peeked through where his soles come loose from the tops of his shoes and wudn't any heels at all. He reared up on the gate, hitched his Levi's, then pulled out the Durham sack.

“Smoke?”

“Okay,” I answered. I had never smoked but I was afraid saying no might hurt his feelings.

“This is just th' makin's,” he said, swinging the sack back and forth by its yellow string. “Got some brown paper sack at your place?”

“We just moved in,” I answered. “Ain't any yet.”

Figuring it was time to come out of the barn, I did, and climbed up on the gate with him. “Can I see your makin's?”

“Shore.” And he opened the drawstring pouch. “Picked hit m'self.”

Inside the sack was a wad of white cotton junk looked like it come from a belly button. “That ain't tobacco!” I said pretty loud.

“Life Everlastin',” he said, closing the bag by pulling one of the strings with his teeth. “Some folks calls hit rabbit tobacco but hit's really Life Everlastin'.”

“Uh . . . that grow in a tobacco patch?”

“Huh-uh, you can get lots out in that field yonder,” and he nodded toward the big pasture behind him. “You never smoked Life Everlastin'?”

“Naw, just tobacco,” I lied.

“Well, hun'ney, Life Everlastin's good for you. Keep your bronical tubes open, Pa says.”

“You ever smoked a tailor-made?” I asked, moving a little to keep the gate slats from cutting into my tailbone.

“Had a butt off'n a Raleigh once. You smoke tailor-mades?”

“Roll my own.”

“Your pa know you smoke?”

“Lordy, no. He'd skin me alive. What's your name?”

“Fred Cody Mulligan.”

I remembered then that Mr. Berman had called the hired hand Mulligan. He also called him white trash. I wondered if Fred was kin to him. Fred didn't look like trash. “Where's your house?”

“West side of Cummings Hill.”

Just then I heard Mom's voice. “Samuueel!”

Fred grinned. “That your ma?”

“Yeah.”

“Mine yells like that too.”

“Reckon she wants me for supper.”

“Yeah, hit's gettin' late.”

“Samuueel.”

“Got t' go,” I said, and jumped down. “Will we be goin' to th' same school?”

Fred looked out in the pasture, which was bleak and dead, and scuffed his no-heel on one of the slats. “Yeah, I s'pose.”

Then we just stayed for a few seconds. “Well, see you at school.”

“Yeah. Here's a purty for you,” and he pulled the prettiest buckeye you ever saw from his pocket and handed it to me, then jumped down on the other side of the gate.

“Thanks, Fred,” I said, walking away. “I'll give you somethin' sometime too.”

“Samuueel . . .” come from the direction of the house.

“Yeah, Mom, I'm comin'!” I yelled, squeezing through the barn doors. I raced to the hole in the fence that was just four, five foot to the side of the garden gate that separated the barn lot from the kitchen yard.

Mom eyed my buckeye when I came puffing up. “Where have you been? You haven't gotten the coal, and supper's ready. What have you got there?”

“A buckeye.”

“Where'd you get a buckeye?”

“Out behind th' barn.”

“What were you doing out there?”

“Foolin'.”

Mom took a deep breath and sighed. Her eyes looked tired and she seemed shorter and fatter than usual in her sweaters and old brown coat. She and Dad had been working day and night, trying to get the house fixed up before spring work. “Get the coal and wash your hands.”