Nathan Coulter (10 page)

He got up after a minute and left the room, and before the rest of us were finished eating we heard him going up the stairs.

“He's gone to roost,” Uncle Burley said.

“You've got no respect, Burley,” Grandma said.

She'd meant to say more, but held it back. She looked down at her plate, and then got up and began clearing the table.

Uncle Burley and I went to the porch again. He lit a cigarette and sharpened the end of the match to pick his teeth. Neither of us said anything. The day had been hot, and it was still hot. No air was stirring.

Uncle Burley flipped the butt of his cigarette out into the yard. He laughed then—quietly and to himself, as if it were the laughter he'd had ready for whatever Grandma had intended to say to him; and now he used it up, wasted it on himself, to be rid of it.

He got up and stood on the edge of the porch, looking out in the direction of the road. He held his hands open in front of him and looked at them, then rubbed them together. “Well,” he said. He stepped off the porch and walked slowly across the yard. Halfway down the driveway he looked back and waved at me. After that he walked faster, on down the driveway and out the lane.

When he was out of sight I called to Grandma that I was going over to see Calvin, and I started through the field toward the Easterlys'. It was nearly dark, but when I looked back the swifts still circled above the house. They dived at the chimney tops, and swerved away as if they couldn't bear for the day to end. Finally, I knew, they'd give up the light and go down for good.

When I got to the Easterlys' I called Calvin from the back door. He came out and we sat down on the step.

“What you been doing?” he asked me.

“Working mostly.”

“Where's Tom?”

“Gone to town.”

“He's got a girl out there, ain't he?”

“They say he has.”

“He has,” Calvin said. He took a sack of peppermint sticks out of his pocket and took one and gave one to me.

“Maybe he has,” I said.

“What we ought to do,” Calvin said, “is slip out to town and watch him.”

“It's his business,” I said.

“Come on. It won't hurt anything. You'll have something to tell on Tom when you go to work Monday morning.”

“All right,” I said.

Calvin laughed and stomped his foot. “God durn, I wish I could be there when you tell it on him.”

There was a crowd in town. Groups of men squatted on the sidewalk in front of the stores, talking and greeting each other. Up the street beyond the store lights the small children played tag, running and laughing around the parked automobiles. Women collected in the stores and talked while they shopped, and carried out armloads of groceries. A few of them were already standing at the edge of the sidewalk, holding their babies, waiting for their men to be ready to go home. Above the rest of the noise you could hear the jukebox playing in the poolroom.

Brother and four or five other boys were standing with two girls in the light of the drugstore window. He was talking and the others leaned toward him, listening to what he said. The prettiest one of the girls stood next to Brother, smiling at him while he talked, and he spoke mostly to her. She was his girl, I imagined, and I was proud of him for having one so pretty. While I watched him standing there with the other boys it seemed to me that he was the best of them, and I began to be ashamed of what I'd come to town for.

When he finished talking all of them laughed. The girl swung away from him, holding to his hand, and he pulled her back and put his arm around her.

I stood with Calvin, pretending to look in the grocery store window, hoping Brother wouldn't see me. But then the whole bunch of them
started up the street past us. I didn't want Brother to know I'd sneaked on him, and I turned toward him to make the best of it.

“Hello,” he said. “What're you doing here?”

For a minute I couldn't think what to say. Then I said, “Let's go down to the river and talk to Uncle Burley for a while.”

They laughed, looking at Brother and then at me.

“Go ahead,” Brother told me. “Who's stopping you?”

The way he said it made me mad. “I reckon you'd rather stay here and fool around with a damn girl,” I said.

Brother's face got red and he took a step toward me, but the girl pulled at his arm. “Come on,” she said.

He looked at me and laughed, then he turned around and they went past me and on up the street.

I stood still for a minute, feeling my own face red and knowing I'd made a fool of myself. There was no other way to see it. What I'd said had been wrong. Brother ought to have slapped my face for saying it. And I thought I should have knocked Calvin's teeth out for suggesting that we come to town in the first place. I turned to tell him so, but he was gone. I looked around for him and saw him going into the drugstore. He was ashamed of me too.

I started back down the street. The game had moved down in front of the stores, the children chasing each other in and out of the crowd. As I walked away I heard a woman's voice telling them, “Get someplace else if you want to play.”

I went out the road toward home, feeling lonesome and stupid and ashamed. For a while I could hear the noise of the town, the music and talking and laughter, more quietly and more quietly as I got farther away. The frogs were singing in Big Ellis's pond when I passed, the sounds getting louder and then quieting too. I turned into our lane, but I didn't feel like going to bed and I went on past the house and down Coulter Branch toward the river. Now and then I'd hear a screech owl calling, and now and then a dog barked down in the bottom.

When I got to Uncle Burley's shack a light was burning in the window. I opened the door and went through the dark kitchen and into the other room where Uncle Burley and Big Ellis were sitting with a bottle of
whiskey and a lighted lamp on the table between them. Their backs were turned to the kitchen door, and Uncle Burley had pulled one of the cots away from the wall and propped his feet on it. When Big Ellis looked around and saw me he started to hide the bottle, but Uncle Burley caught his arm and stopped him.

“It's all right.”

“He's a good boy, that boy is,” Big Ellis said.

Uncle Burley grinned at me. “The more the merrier,” he said. “Have a seat.”

I crossed the room and sat down on the other cot.

“Where you been, boy?” Uncle Burley asked me.

“I went to town a while,” I said, “and then I came down here.”

“I'm glad you came,” Uncle Burley said.

“He's a pretty damn good boy, I tell you,” Big Ellis said.

Neither of them could think of anything else to say. They just smoked, and passed the bottle once in a while, looking at the wall.

Finally Uncle Burley said, “It's hot.”

“It's too hot,” Big Ellis said. “We're bound to get some rain.”

They were quiet again for a minute or two, and then Uncle Burley looked at Big Ellis and grinned as if he'd just thought of something that made him happy.

“I wonder if old Jig's at home,” he said.

Big Ellis leaned toward the window and looked up the river toward Jig Pendleton's shanty boat. “No light up there. I expect he's asleep.”

“The more the merrier,” Uncle Burley said. He got up and went out the door.

Big Ellis and I followed him onto the porch. Jig's boat was dark and quiet. We could barely make out the shape of it through the trees.

“Call him,” Big Ellis said.

Uncle Burley cupped his hands around his mouth and called, “Jig!”

There was no answer.

“Call him again,” Big Ellis said; and Uncle Burley called again.

“What?” Jig said.

“Come on down,” Uncle Burley said. “We're having a little social event here.”

Jig didn't answer, but before long he came out with a lantern and untied his rowboat. We heard the knock and creak of his oarlocks as he came down the river toward us.

Jig tied the boat to a tree and climbed the bank. When he came onto the porch we went back inside and he followed us.

“How're you, Jig?” Uncle Burley asked.

Jig blew out his lantern and hung it on a nail over the door, and then he shook our hands. I'd never seen anybody look so sad in my life.

“No man's strength is equal to his wickedness,” he said. “God has to forgive us before he can love us. Surely the people is grass.”

“The more the merrier, Jig,” Uncle Burley said. “Have a seat.”

Jig sat down. Big Ellis handed him the bottle and he drank.

“That's an evil thing, Burley,” he said. He looked at the bottle and handed it to Uncle Burley.

“But ain't it a mellow-ripe sample of it?” Uncle Burley said.

Jig shook his head. “Mellow as sin, Burley, and ripe.”

Uncle Burley looked at him and then patted his shoulder. “You'll feel better when it's morning, old Jig.”

Uncle Burley and Big Ellis sat down and began drinking again. But Jig had made them sad and they were even quieter than they'd been before. The three of them passed the bottle back and forth, drinking as if it were a chore they'd be glad to be done with.

Their seriousness and quietness began to bother me. I was more in the dumps than I'd been when I got there. I wished I'd gone on home to bed.

“I'd just as soon it was morning,” Uncle Burley said.

“I'd just as soon it was,” Big Ellis said.

“What time is it?”

Big Ellis got out his watch and held it to the light. “Half past eleven.”

“She's a slow one, ain't she?” Uncle Burley said. Then he said, “Wind that thing.”

Big Ellis wound the watch and put it back in his pocket.

Jig got up and wobbled out the door, and I heard him take his boots off and lie down on the porch. Uncle Burley and Big Ellis didn't seem to notice he was gone. I leaned back against the wall and dozed off. But I couldn't get all the way to sleep; every little sound woke me. Sometimes
I'd hear Jig turning over on the porch. He'd grunt and say, “Oh me,” and then be quiet again. And Uncle Burley and Big Ellis sat on, drinking at the table.

Finally I heard Big Ellis say, “Where's Jig?”

“I don't know,” Uncle Burley said. “We ought to get him to come and talk to us.”

“Tell him to,” Big Ellis said.

Uncle Burley stood up, and then he got down on his hands and knees and began crawling toward the door.

Big Ellis giggled. “What're you crawling for?”

“You got to watch this floor,” Uncle Burley said. “It's a booger.”

He got to the door and called, “Oh, Jig!”

Jig stirred and grunted. “What?”

“Come on down, Jig. We got a little social event going on here.”

“All right,” Jig said.

Uncle Burley cocked his ear up the river and listened.

“Is he coming?” Big Ellis asked.

“No,” Uncle Burley said. “I can't even see a light.”

“He'll come,” Big Ellis said. “Call him again.”

Uncle Burley called, “Jig!”

I heard one of Jig's elbows thump on the porch.

“What?”

“Come on.”

“All right.”

Uncle Burley listened again.

“You hear him yet?” Big Ellis asked.

“Aw, he ain't coming,” Uncle Burley said. “He's scared of the dark.” He stretched out across the doorway and folded his hands over his chest. “We'll see him in the morning, I reckon.”

When I looked back at Big Ellis he was asleep, his head resting against the tabletop. They seemed to have settled down for the night. I was too sleepy to go home, so I took off my shoes and stretched out on the cot, thinking I'd take a nap and then get home before daylight to keep from worrying Grandma.

When I woke it was thundering. A strong wind had come up,
fluttering the lamp flame until the whole house seemed to sway and jiggle in the wind. The rest of them were still asleep. Big Ellis hadn't moved since I'd lain down. The light bobbled his shadow over the wall behind him, and when the lightning flashes came his shadow jumped to the other wall and flickered there. It was like waking up on Judgment Day.

I was trying to untangle the blanket to pull it over my head when the rain came—a few big drops spattered the roof, and then a sheet of water blew into the door where Uncle Burley was sleeping.

He rolled over. “Quit,” he said. He wiped the water out of his eyes and scrambled into the room. Jig followed him in and slammed the door.

Big Ellis sat up and rubbed his eyes. “It's raining,” he said.

“You ought to been a prophet,” Uncle Burley said. He sat down at the table again.

The lightning got worse. Jig stood in the middle of the floor and watched it, as wild-eyed as a ghost.

“Burley,” he said, “He could strike us down with one of them.”

“I reckon so,” Uncle Burley said.

“He could strike you down just like a rabbit.”

“He can shoot 'em like a rifle,” Uncle Burley said.

It lightened again; the thunder clapped down, jarring the house.

“Oh,” Jig said. He fell on the floor with his hands over his face.

“Bull's-eye,” Uncle Burley said.

The thunder bumbled away over the top of the hill.

“Burley, that one struck something,” Big Ellis said.

“It must have,” Uncle Burley said.

We went to the windows and looked out, but it was raining too hard to see anything. Jig was still on the floor hiding his face.