Chiefs (16 page)

My daddy wuz on ol’ Mist
⁷
Reynolds’s place ovuh Talbot County. He have fo’ cows. I’se a pret’ fair carpenter, too. Fix things up ‘round the place.”

“How about your boy?”

“He ain’t but jes’ turn nine. His mama want him in school. But he chop wood.”

“Nellie?”

“Nellie jes’ ‘bout the bes’ washwoman they is, yessuh.”

“Uh-huh.” Hoss put down the hoof and stood up, stroking the horse’s neck. “Can’t offer you much in the way of money, Jesse. Times is hard. But there’s a house empty over there.” He pointed to a crumbling shack a couple of hundred yards away. “Needs some fixing up, but you say you’re a carpenter. There’s some scrap lumber in the tool shed. Roof’s all right, I’d say. You can have a quart of milk a day and a pound of butter a week from the dairy. I grow my own wheat and mill it over at Luthersville. You can have a sack of flour every month. There’s room for some vegetables behind the house, and there’ll be some corn at harvest time and some peaches in the summer. Miz Spence’ll give Nellie a few chickens that can scratch around your place. All right?”

“Yessuh.”

“My niggers work hard, do what they’re told, or I run ‘em off, you understand me?”

“Yessuh.” Hoss began to stroll back toward the main house. Jesse started to heave a small sigh of relief, but Hoss cut him off in midsigh.

“Folks say Nellie’s got a sharp tongue. You see she keeps it in her mouth, hear?”

“Yessuh.”

Hoss continued toward the house, and Jesse turned the horse, climbed into the buggy, and started back for his family and their few things. He was sweating heavily, and his hands were trembling. Soon the horse’s trotting soothed him, and he reflected on his new job, their new life. It wasn’t a bad deal. He knew he wouldn’t see much money, but they could live. The milk and butter was a nice thing. It wouldn’t be like working for Mr. Will Henry, but if he could keep Nellie quiet and the boy out of trouble they could live.

Chapter 21.

IN MID-OCTOBER of that year Billy Lee spent a Saturday afternoon that he would have cause to remember many times during the remainder of his life, partly because it seemed to embody the best of a long series of childhood Saturday afternoons and to represent them all in his mind, and partly because he was introduced to something new and, in many ways, disturbing.

He spent the morning raking leaves, for which he received his weekly pocket money, had a sandwich and a slice of cake from Flossie, because his father was too busy on Saturdays to come home for a proper dinner, and then he went to town. Town was a single block of Main Street, and it was only two blocks from his home, but for a child of eight during his first year as a town dweller it could not have been more fascinating if he had arrived from a great distance by magic carpet.

He began at the Delano Drug Company, on the corner, where he splurged a nickel of his fifteen cents on a root beer, a concoction made all the more exotic because he could watch it being assembled before his eyes—a splash of syrup, a dash of milk, then filled with soda water and, at the last moment, the handle reversed on the tap to produce a thin, hard stream that whipped the top of the drink into a creamy froth. He savored this over a copy of the
Police Gazette
, borrowed from the magazine rack, then carefully returned. Mr. Birdsong didn’t mind if you didn’t buy them as long as you put them back neatly, and Billy was not about to abuse this privilege, since it inflated his pocket money no end.

From there he went to another favorite place, McKibbon’s Hardware, which smelled wonderfully of iron and rope. There he spent some time assessing the relative qualities of two dozen pocket knives and settled tentatively on one with a bone handle and four blades. A final selection would have to wait until he had saved the dollar and twenty cents.

Then to the feed store, which was the cleanest-smelling place in the world, with its powdery aroma of grain and flour. To Billy’s mind, Jim Buce’s feed store was also Delano’s answer to a big-city pet shop, for there was a stack of deep trays holding dozens of baby chicks, which were as cute as kittens, until they got bigger. He cupped one of the fluffy creatures in his hands for a few minutes and wondered again how anything so lovable could grow up to be a chicken.

Finally, he dashed through the thickening shopping crowd to the post office, where he peeked through the little windows of the boxes in a private game to find the furthermost postmark. Birmingham was the best he could do. Once he had found a New York postmark; on another occasion, one from a place called Los, in California. He saved the wanted posters for last, imprinting the faces on his mind and trying to remember their crimes, so that he might someday recognize a criminal visage and turn the man in to his father.

From the post office he dashed across the street, nearly under the hooves of a team of mules, and through the passage next to the Toonerville Trolley, which was a real trolley car turned into a diner, and came to the most entertaining place in all of Delano, Winslow’s Livery Stable. It sat behind the north row of Main Street stores, perhaps fifty yards away, on a bluff which fell to the B&M railroad tracks. Between the stores and the stables was a large open space, and this was now rapidly filling with wagons, which his father no longer permitted to park on Main Street on Saturdays, and with perhaps two hundred people, many of them leading or grooming mules, which would be auctioned that afternoon. He was darting through the milling crowd when he ran, forcibly, into Foxy Funderburke.

Foxy let out a loud grunt, then grasped him by his coat at each shoulder and held him back at arm’s length, a fierce scowl on his wizened face. The scowl softened slightly. “Young Lee,” Foxy said, not unkindly.

“Yessir,” Billy panted. ” ‘Scuse me, I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

Foxy still held him, still stared at him. “How’s your dog?” Billy and Eloise had, at their mother’s insistence, composed a thank-you letter when the puppy had arrived.

“Just fine, sir. We named him Pepper, ‘cause Eloise spilled some pepper on him and he sneezed.” Still Foxy held him. “He’s on the back porch right now, ‘cause Mr. Winslow doesn’t like dogs around at the mule sales.” Still Foxy held him and stared. “He’s an awful good dog, and we thank you for him.”

Foxy released him but continued to watch him closely. “Do you know about Labrador retrievers? Where they came from and all that?” Foxy spoke flatly, as if he were thinking of something else.

“Nossir.”

“They originated in Newfoundland and Labrador. The fishermen there used them to help retrieve their nets in the cold water. They have such thick hair that the cold water doesn’t bother them, and they like to swim. That’s why they’re such good duck dogs. Does your father take you duck hunting?”

“Nossir, he doesn’t like shotguns much. He hunts squirrels and rabbits with a .22, though.”

“Maybe I’ll take you and your dog duck hunting sometimes.” Foxy did not wait for a reply. He took a deep breath and released it, then walked away. Billy looked after him. He didn’t understand Foxy Funderburke. He didn’t talk like other people. You didn’t know what you were supposed to say.

“Hey, Billy Lee!” A familiar voice spun him around.

“Hey, Willie!” Billy had not seen him since leaving the farm. The black youngster had grown at least an inch but was still very slender. “How you doing?”

“I’m doin’ awright. Mama and Daddy’s over to the buggy.”

“They doing all right?”

“Yeah. Daddy, he milkin’ for Mist’ Hoss Spence and fixin’ up ‘round the place. Mama, she washin’, and I chops a whole heap o’ wood. How you like it in town?”

“I like it fine. We got a new dog; he’s a Labrador ‘triever. They used to pull in fishing nets in Labrador. Ol’ Foxy Funderburke gave him to us. How you like it out at the Spences’?”

“It’s awright. We don’t git off much, but we git a whole lotta milk ‘n stuff. Ol’ man Hoss whup me onct fo’ spillin’ some milk. Mama like to had a fit, but I reckon I done had it comin’. Daddy say he reckon so, too.” Willie Cole seemed older to Billy; quieter. Billy thought he liked the change.

“Hey, let’s go watch Farrell do the shoeing!” The two boys cut through the crowd toward the smithy, which stood, not under a spreading chestnut tree, but under a tin roof at one side of the stables. They found a pair of nail kegs and settled themselves quietly out of the way, but in sight of the smith’s hands and tools. Farrell Moran did not like little boys chattering and asking questions, not on a Saturday when there were a lot of mules to be shod and gossip to catch up on from the men who brought them. A man led up a mule, and Farrell tethered it to an iron ring on a post. He picked up a hoof and quickly pulled the nails and removed the old shoe. He handed it to Billy with a wink, then cleaned the hoof and, with deft strokes of a two-handled blade, cut away the excess hoof as easily as a man pared a fingernail. Billy cringed inside his collar, but the knife never seemed to hurt the animals. Farrell selected a shoe, compared it to the hoof, exchanged it for another, and plunged it into the coals, pumping the bellows with his foot to make the fire hotter. As the shoe began to heat, he quickly repeated his actions with each hoof. Billy and Willie exchanged a quick grin. Now came the part they liked best.

Farrell retrieved a shoe with his tongs, placed it on the anvil, and began banging it into the shape he wanted, sparks flying and the hammer ringing as it struck home. When it looked right to Farrell he plunged the red-hot shoe into a trough of water, and the boys laughed out loud as the water hissed and bubbled. He fitted the shoe to the hoof and nailed it home, clipping the ends of the nails, which protruded through the hoof. He picked up another shoe from the fire and began banging again.

“What about ol’ Hugh Holmes gettin’ that road to Greenville paved by the state!”

“What did Holmes have to do with that?” a farmer asked.

“Shoot, where you been? He talked the state into paying for the whole thing, and that was before he even got elected!”

“You hear about that business with the county camp?” somebody chimed in. “Mr. Holmes went up there and saw what they was feedin’ those boys and pitched a fit. Cap’n had ‘em eatin’ fatback and dried peas three times a day! Mr. Holmes got the commissioners to let the prisoners build ‘em a chicken house and plant some greens. And ol’ Holmes just drops by now and then and has dinner with ‘em on the road and makes the cap’n eat with ‘em, too, and you know, they say those boys eating real good these days!” Everybody had a good chuckle over that.

“Wonder what ol’ Skeeter is doin’ for pocket money nowadays, now that he ain’t rentin’ convicts to nobody? Shoot, I remember when some folks ‘round here had convicts picking their cotton when I was payin’ niggers to do it, back when there was some cotton to pick.”

“They say peaches is the thing of the future.”

“I don’t doubt it, if you got the money to wait for the trees to grow up. It’s all right if you’re Hoss Spence, and you got the land and the money from a crop the weevil can’t kill to see you through while the trees are growin’, but I’ll tell you one thing, there ain’t goin’ to be no little peach farmers around here, just big ones that can afford to pack ‘em theirselves.” There was a murmer of agreement.

The boys watched another two mules be shod, then wandered off toward the stables. The lofts were packed with new-mown hay, and they spent the better part of an hour climbing as high as they could and jumping into soft piles. They looked for peanuts clinging to the peanut hay and ate them greedily, even though it was said that raw peanuts would give you a stomach ache, just as green crab apples would. Gradually, people in the stables led their mules and horses outside for the sale, and it became quiet inside. Billy and Willie lay back in the hayloft, temporarily exhausted from their exertions, and fell into a kind of hazy doze, watching the shafts of sunlight penetrate the cracks in the side of the building, playing on the dust that hung in the air.

The stable door opened a crack and closed again. Footsteps were heard as someone walked to the center of the stable and stopped. There was silence for a moment. Willie tapped Billy on the arm and put a finger to his lips with an air of conspiracy. They would spy on whoever was alone in the stable. The footsteps were heard again, and they heard the creak of a stall door opening. It did not close. The two boys rolled carefully onto their bellies and slid silently to the edge of the loft, so that they could see over the edge. They saw Foxy Funderburke leaning against the side of the stall, in the shadows, illuminated only by stray shafts of light through the cracks. In the distance they heard Winslow’s voice rise and fall as he pled for a better price for a mule. Foxy seemed to be fumbling with his trousers, and Billy wondered why he would pee in a clean stall instead of behind the barn. But something was unusual about Foxy’s posture. His knees were bent, and he was hunched over, rocking back and forth through a small arc. They could hear his breathing grow quicker and deeper, and then there was some sort of frantic movement in the darkness. Suddenly, the air was pierced by a loud sound from Foxy, not words, but a sound. Billy thought he must be ill and looked at Willie in alarm. Willie motioned for him to remain still and quiet.

Foxy slumped against the side of the stall, and his breathing gradually returned to normal. There was a flash of a handkerchief and the rattle of a belt buckle; Foxy walked to the stable door, opened it a foot and paused. He looked back into the stable, glancing about until suddenly, his eyes seemed to lock with Billy’s. Billy held his breath and prepared to run. But Foxy did not seem to have seen him. He stepped outside and closed the door.