Deep in the Heart of Me (10 page)

"Good-bye Tonio," she says as her father is closing the door. I do not even get a chance to say good-bye. I walk toward Tibby and Sheriff is a little behind me. "I'm going to be frank, young man. I've asked around about you and you're a good sort. Hell of a baseball player from what I hear."

He heard that? I am pretty good. I'm very good in fact, not that there is time to play much, but I make my mark. I'm not as good as Shaun.

"Seems Sobe is taken with all of you. She's…had it hard losing her mother."

"How long ago?" I say before I can think. This is what Dad means.

"This is the second year," he says.

"How…." Maybe it's too much, asking this.

"Sudden. Very sudden. We don't like to talk about it. Don't bring it up to her."

I don't know why or how I feel his lack of…honesty. Is lying the family way? I hope not. She said she would not lie to me.

"I…am sorry," I say, as I've been taught. I put on my cap.

"Sobe is taken with your family. I've often wished she had a big brother…not that I'm giving you the job, understand. She is a young lady and…she is a fragile person."

Sobe…fragile? I think of her tears. But they all cry. Girls do. They don't have pride about that.

"You are aware they are the weaker sex?" he says.

"Gentler," I say. "My dad says gentler." I have never seen Maman weak. Nor Granma.

"It's the same," he says.

"It shouldn't be." I am thinking of the animals. Gentle and weak are very different. I think it's the other way. We try not to be weak for them. We try to live up to them. I've heard Dad say to Mom, he doesn't know where he would be without her. I've heard him say that more than once through the boards of my floor.

"You're a ballplayer and a scholar? I didn't know someone could be such a troublemaker at school and be a know-it-all, son."

"I just mean…if a horse is gentle, it doesn't mean she is weak. They're not anything alike—those words."

It's funny how I've been tongue-tied around Sobe, but I have no fear of speaking my mind to her father. I have one to knuckle under to, and he's at the farm probably ready to work me to midnight for not coming home, but this one, he put me in the gaol once, but he can't arrest me for having an opinion.

"She has asked to spend time on your farm, and I think it will be good for her. But I'm counting on you to always be a gentleman."

There's that word again. Gentle. I will be gentle with her. But I wonder how well he knows his daughter. She may be fragile, she may be troubled, but Sobe Bell is hardly weak. She's far too grand for that.

"I wouldn't hurt Sobe," I say. "I was in the house for five minutes. She was scared."

He has his chin tucked, and he's weighing my words. "If I thought different it would be different. Right now."

I swallow. I realize my hands are in fists, and I make an effort to uncurl them.

He takes in a breath. "I'm just looking out for my little girl. She's all I have."

"Yes, Sir," I say. "I have to get home."

I untie Tibby and leap easily onto her back.

He slaps her rump and says he'll see me in the morning at church.

I guess he knows all about my family. That's how it is around here.

I touch the bill of my cap. It's not him I'll be watching for.

He's got a daughter who is raising her fist to God and tired of being good.

And he has no notion of it.

But I am aware of Sobe Bell. And so I best him.

The ride home is not long enough for all I have to ponder about Sobe Bell. The pleasant feel of her hands on my sides and herself riding behind me on Tibby for all the world. Her voice and laugh. Her pretty self and the many different ways she looks according to what she's doing or saying or thinking. She is interesting. I have never been so interested. I painted the whole side of a schoolhouse, and I have barely any memory of the work, I just know it went too quickly.

The sun is going to drop, and it will be night. Maman will light the lamps, and my father will curse me under his breath. He is either ready to burst with pride over me or ready to kill me. There doesn't seem to be much middle ground these days.

But I don't care like you'd think. I did right.

Ebbie is by the road at the stand bringing in the cans from this morning's milk. "Dad is looking for you," he says.

Dad is looking for me. It's nearly the last thing any of us ever wants to hear. That and, "Jesus is up in the sky."

Well, I would be late all over again, that's what I know.

I drop off of Tibby's back and tell Ebbie to turn her into the paddock so she can eat clover under this full moon.

He is happy to do that, and I pull the skid with the rattly cans. This milk means a check every week. It's the thing that keeps the farm going. Well, that and money from the gas, let's not forget it. My dad and my uncles haul gas from the railroad to the station where Uncle Frank sells it in Maumen. It has set us apart and bred our arrogance, some say, for the Clannans have gone from making three cents profit on a gallon to a dime.

Crops pay but once a year, eggs by the month, but milk means a check as regular as Friday. So our nest is well feathered, but of course, it's never enough.

Dad is in the milking barn when I bring in the cans. He doesn't look at me, though he hears and sees.

I approach him, shoving my splattered and battered hands in my pockets.

He finishes writing in the notebook by the light of the lamp.

"I finished at the school," I say.

He closes the book and removes his glasses rubbing the indented places on his nose. "Shaun didn't come in. Your mother…go get him."

I do not relish this. I never do. "Is he at home?"

"Take Tibby and the wagon."

"Yes, Sir."

"Pack him up. We're moving him to the bunkhouse."

"Does…does Shaun know this?"

"He will."

He will? I can only hope he's passed out when I get there then. "Can I take Joseph?"

"No. Do it alone."

That means Joseph is doing my work, and they have split Shaun's. If Shaun is passed out, he'll be like four sacks of feed rolled into one drunk boyo. But if he's awake he might fight. I nearly sigh. I am on too thin ice to sigh loudly. Getting Shaun is how Dad is dealing with me. But when you look at us, who better—my sisters?

"Good work at the school," Dad says gathering the books and not looking at me.

I can't believe my ears.

"Thank you," I say trying to sound like he compliments every day when I'm expecting trouble.

"My son is first on the job and last to leave," he says, a true smile for me.

I am nearly ashamed. This is where I should say he got it wrong. I was…courting? But I only nod. And I go out.

The ground is soft, but there is a worn path between our house and the tenant house on the edge of the field. With the moon, I can see very well. I have my shotgun under the seat. There are many about these days, and I'm sort of on the lookout when I think about it.

I wonder if Sobe would be scared out here or is it only the insides of shadowy houses that scare her. Sheriff takes her by car to school, but she walked to the schoolhouse today. To see me. I invited her. I didn't care if she helped or not. I'm not like Dad, looking for a mule.

I see a red fox run across the plowed furrows. He disturbs a group of does gleaning.

Soon as we harvest, we spread manure and plow. Sometimes we spread more manure after then in spring we plow again, and we plant. We pull from this earth, and Dad says there is no boss like it, none as cruel and unfeeling, like the land.

My mind flips through so many things. I wonder what Sobe ate for supper. I have not eaten. If I had gone to the house, Mom would have given me something, but with it worry for Shaun. He is a distant relative, a second cousin is what we call him. Maman's brood are all girls so they've followed husbands across three states. Dad's are around us spread out over two counties. Well, all but the one sister in Arkansas. Somehow Shaun is tied to her, but not by blood.

Shaun found his way to us. He was newly married. And I don't want to think on all of it.

They come for work. An endless stream. And food. Sometimes they have wagons piled with goods and family, sometimes it's a truck and even when they are Negroes, they look like us. Just like us and if you can't see the sameness, you're blind cause they gobble Maman's sandwiches as fast as anybody.

"Our people work," Dad says. I think he says it to keep the hard times off of us.

But Maman rebukes him when he says that. Others do not have work. Mom keeps it before us, how blessed we are in these times, but Dad grouses about the government stepping in.

President Roosevelt put many young men to work in the CCC. Including veterans of the Great War who flocked to those camps and a dollar a day and three square meals, more food than most have known before. And the uniforms are nice and neat and better than some of the clothes the farmers wear. They may only have to work an eight-hour day, which sounds like heaven, but they do a lot of good things like build roads and plant trees.

You have to be eighteen to get in, but we've known of some younger, a boy one year older than me—fourteen. We met him at church last year. His father put him out. Said he had to make his way there were too many at home and no food.

But another said that boy left camp. Homesick.

"See there," Dad told me. "Watch yourself."

Guess that kid and plenty like him don't have the job of 'carrying on.' I wonder what it would be like to be so free.

But Dad worries where it will go. It was bad before Roosevelt made these jobs. Dad worried we'd have a revolt worse than the time North, fought South.

But now he worries that people will look to the government for their livelihoods. That would be terrible, he says. There would be nothing solid to it but the next government check and where does something like that end, he says with the pounding finger.

Mom says he is too English in his thinking. Dad says he is American in his thinking. He doesn't like being called English. He's Irish he reminds us unless he's in a mood to love France. But he is not ready to serve one of the fascists like over in Europe even if he comes with offers of milk and sweets. That's what he tells Mom.

Dependence on the government will kill a man's will to work when he is given money he hasn't earned, Dad says. We could make a sampler on that one, but then we don't need it, it's burned in our brains.

When Dad gets going, and the Bible is put away for the night, and Dad has his glass of wine, Maman tells him to go to bed. Last she heard, she often says, he was not elected president.

I might like to try it, being the son of a president. But it's never going to happen unless you count the co-op or the school board.

I am nearing Shaun's house. And I feel his pain in a way I can't explain. His and others before him. I try not to. It's Joseph Maman always says has this soft heart. He's the one that cries at the beginning of butchering every year though he would deny that.

I do not cry very much. When I'm angry sometimes, where no one sees mostly. But inside I feel more than anyone knows. And Shaun has a sinkhole of grief inside. He makes me know how black the world can be.

So I pull up, and there are no lights. I hope that means he's out like a light. The door is partly open. I push in some with my shoulder. "Shaun?" I say.

There is a breeze, but it's eerie now and just shadows in the small room in the small house. It's a mess. Drawers pulled out, everything on the floor.

I see Shaun's boots in the doorway that leads to a small room where he slept with his wife…where she died. They died.

I hurry there, and he is on his back, and he looks dead. There is blood coming out of his head somewhere, and I know how the head bleeds, it's endless sometimes. "Shaun," I say, and I'm shaking him.

I pull on his arm and get him to sit, and he groans. I see two empty bottles along the wall where they've rolled because this floor has a pitch. "Shaun," I say.

He's moaning and not making sense. I look around, and this is a crime. I lay him back down and hurry to the wagon for my shotgun. I look around and the leaves in the pin-oaks rustle in the wind. There are night sounds and a donkey brays off to the south.

I get back inside and lean my gun against the wall. It takes forever to get him into the back of the wagon. He barely helps and stumbles and collapses on me. I drop him twice. I have a rag from in the house under his head to catch the blood.

The blow is on the side of his head like he got waylaid.

I get my gun, and I'm on the seat quick enough. I am armed and ready, and Dad has always told me to save myself if it comes to it. He says you have to get that in your mind before you ever need it.

So that ride home is twice as long as the one that came before. I pull the wagon close to the house, and I am calling for Dad. They pour out then, my parents and my brothers and sisters and last even my Granma.

They get Shaun inside so Mom can care for him and Dad goes for the sheriff while me and my brothers stand guard.

Joseph at the road where he will fire a warning shot if he sees anything, Ebbie at the house and me walking a circle around our place. This is how our father taught us.

All the tiredness has left me now.

I am ready to fight.