The Best Bad Luck I Ever Had (20 page)

I went upstairs to bed. But I didn’t sleep. Instead, I kept watch out my window too.

40

 

 

 

THE NEXT AFTERNOON, ME AND EMMA SAT on the top of our mound, just looking at the sky. I was awful tired, but I guess I must have slept some ’cause I remember seeing the starry sky one moment and Raymond shaking me awake for chores the next. On top of the mound, the February wind was cold, but the clouds it brought with it were amazing. I just wanted to stare at them and think about nothing.

“Do you remember the Wild West show at the circus?” Emma asked suddenly.

“Yeah.” The one cloud did look kind of like a bronco. I wanted to ask her if she thought so too, but it just seemed like too much trouble.

“Do you think the cowboys killed the Indians that built these mounds?”

“I don’t know.”

Emma began to cry. I wanted to put my arm around her but wasn’t sure if she’d like it. “If I had just left when Big Foot told me to,” she said.

I couldn’t think of nothing to say.

“I thought I was smarter than all those white kids. That’s why I learned those lines.”

“You are smarter.”

“Shut up, Dit.” But she stopped crying, sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “You going to the play tonight?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Aren’t you the ringmaster?”

I shook my head. “I wouldn’t do it. Pearl and Raymond dropped out too.”

“Aw, Dit,” she said softly. “They didn’t have to do that. Pearl was so excited about being the ballerina.”

“I told Mrs. Seay if you weren’t in it, there shouldn’t be no play.”

Emma smiled, but she still looked sad.

 

 

That night I did go to the play, just for a minute. The school-room was packed. I guess most everyone in town had heard about the scuffle. Don’t know why that made them come. Did they think there was gonna be another fight? Doc Haley was still at the Walkers’, and Big Foot was nowhere to be seen. Anyway, Buster stood on the stage as the ringmaster, reading from a script.

“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the most fantastical circus of the cemetery, I mean cent-ury.” Big Foot’s eagle sat in its cage on a table behind Buster. He pointed awkwardly to it. “Here is the eagle, symbol of my adopted country, the great us-a. I mean U-S-A.”

I couldn’t watch any more and went out to sit on the front stoop. Pearl was already there.

“Don’t you want to go in?” I asked her.

“No.”

“Buster’s doing a bad job.”

Pearl sniffed. “Don’t expect me to feel better just ’cause Buster can’t read.”

I smiled and sat down next to my sister. Sometimes, she was okay. A moment later, Mrs. Seay came out of the schoolhouse and sat down next to us.

“You were right, Dit,” she said softly. “We should’ve canceled the whole thing.” The three of us sat quietly in the darkness. Mrs. Seay sniffed a couple of times, like she was trying not to cry.

Finally, Mrs. Seay blew her nose and said, “You know, not everyone in town thinks Big Foot is a good lawman.”

“You said he was. In class, when Uncle Wiggens was there.” It was a rude thing to say, and I knew it.

“Well”—she took a deep breath—“I’ve been known to be wrong before.”

41

 

 

 

PA AND DR. GRIFFITH KEPT WATCH FOR two more nights on our front porch, then they put their guns away. Guess they thought the whole thing was just about ready to blow over. Doc Haley stayed in the Walkers’ parlor for another week, till his ankle had healed enough for him to hobble around without help.

Big Foot didn’t leave his front porch for that whole week, just sat there and drank beer. The bottles lined up all along the porch. Finally, someone stole the bottles for the deposit money. I had wanted to but hadn’t dared.

Elbert quit going to school and started working in the barbershop full time. Doc couldn’t cut hair or give shaves with his arm broke, so Elbert took all that over. Me and Emma brought Doc and Elbert biscuits from Mrs. Walker and half a ham from my mama. We shucked some corn too and left it all in a basket behind the barbershop.

I made another trip to Selma with Dr. Griffith the first weekend in March. He didn’t mention that night on my front porch, and I didn’t say nothing about it either. On that trip, I finally earned the last of my Fourth hunt money. The next morning, I took all my pennies, nickels and quarters to Mrs. Pooley’s store and had her change them into two new, crisp dollar bills. I folded them carefully and stuffed them into my pocket. I was gonna carry them with me everywhere till the day of the Fourth hunt finally came.

It was a fine sunny day with no clouds and just a touch of wind. I went by Emma’s to see if she’d come fishing with me to celebrate.

“I’m not celebrating you entering the Fourth hunt,” Emma said, “’cause I still don’t think that’s such a good idea. But earning a whole two dollars”—she smiled—“that’s really something.”

I grinned and hoped my pa would think the same.

“Are you going to ask Elbert to come too?” asked Emma. “Didn’t he help you when you were collecting the scrap metal?”

“Yeah.” The truth was, I was a bit nervous about getting the two of them together. Elbert had never seemed too fond of Emma.

“Well, I don’t mind,” said Emma. “If you want, ask him.”

So we headed off to the barbershop. I was sure Elbert was gonna say no, but to my surprise, Doc Haley told him to take the afternoon off. So the three of us hitched a ride down the road and ended up at the same fishing hole where me and Pa had run into Emma and Mr. Walker.

Even sat on the same log across the river. I was in the middle, with Elbert on one side and Emma on the other. It was as awkward as it had been all those months before. The fish weren’t even biting.

“So, Emma,” Elbert said finally, “Dit tells me you like to read.”

“Yes, I do,” said Emma. “How about you?”

“Naw, not so much,” said Elbert.

“Oh,” said Emma.

This was not going well.

“Tell him about that book you read,” I coaxed Emma. “The one with the map.”

“
Treasure Island
?” asked Emma.

“Yeah.”

“I don’t think Elbert’d be interested.”

“Oh, come on, Emma. It was great. It had those pirates, and oh, tell him about the boy who was raised by the apes!”

“That’s
Tarzan,
” said Emma. “You’re mixing them up.”

“A boy was raised by apes?” asked Elbert.

“In a secret garden,” I explained. “And there was this boy in a chair with wheels and—”

“The ape boy?” asked Elbert.

“No, no, this was a different boy,” I said. “And he found a treasure map and convinced this girl, Jane, to go sailing with him.”

Emma laughed. “You’re messing it up on purpose now!”

Maybe I was.

“Let me get this straight,” Elbert said. “You got a book about pirates, ape boys, sailing girls and buried treasure in a secret garden?”

“No, no, no!” Emma laughed.

“Well, shoot, if we’d had books like that in school, maybe I’d like reading!” Elbert exclaimed.

We all laughed then and soon the fish started biting and I shouldn’t have worried because it turned out Elbert and Emma got along just fine.

We walked back to town carrying a whole string of fish. Soon as we reached the edge of town, we saw Uncle Wiggens hobbling by on his wooden leg. He was eating a banana.

“Hi, Uncle Wiggens,” I said. “Where’d you get that?”

“Banana train’s in town,” he told us as he took another bite.

We took off running for the train depot. Bananas arrived in New Orleans by ship. Occasionally, a passenger train would load up a car or two full of bananas and post a man in each car to sell the stalks as the train made its stops.

Sure enough, soon as we reached the depot, we saw the special car, loaded up with green and yellow bananas. The banana man sat on top in a yellow uniform and cap, calling at the top of his lungs, “Bananas! Fresh bananas for sale!”

“How ’bout a free sample?” I yelled to the man.

“Yeah, right, kid,” the man called back. “I give you a free taste and pretty soon this whole platform’d be swarming with people begging like monkeys.”

This set the three of us off giggling, especially since we’d spent half the afternoon talking about Tarzan and his apes. Besides, it seemed like half the town was there anyway. Dr. Griffith and Mayor Davidson each bought a bunch. Mrs. Pooley bought a whole barrel of green ones for her store. Even Doc Haley wandered over from the barbershop, just to watch all the commotion.

“Oh, please, sir,” Elbert cried out as the train started to pull out of the station.

“Maybe just a real ripe one you couldn’t sell to anyone else,” pleaded Emma.

“Ooo, ooo, ah, eee!” I cried out, jumping around like an animal.

The man finally grinned and tossed down three ripe bananas.

We didn’t get bananas too often. Emma peeled hers carefully, trying to make it last. But I gobbled mine down, just as fast as a monkey. Elbert did the same. Doc Haley laughed. “You kids that hungry, come on over to the barbershop and I’ll fry you up that fish for dinner.”

42

 

 

 

IT HAD BEEN JUST ABOUT THE PERFECT afternoon. Me and Elbert were setting the little table in the corner of the barbershop. Emma was eating the last of her banana as she watched Doc Haley fry up the fish on the tiny stove.

“That’s not how my mama cooks fish,” Emma said.

“Well, girl,” Doc Haley said pleasantly, “you’d better pay attention, then, ’cause once you taste my cooking, you’re gonna want to show your mama how it’s really done.”

Emma laughed. The bell on the front door jingled, and we all turned to see who it was.

Big Foot stepped into the store. His shirt was rumpled, and there was a stain under his right arm. The fading bruises on Doc’s face were blue and purple. The frying fish sounded awful loud.

“Elbert,” Doc said finally, “go get Big Foot’s hair tonic.”

Elbert rushed to get the tonic. He returned in a moment and handed the small bottle to his pa, who, in turn, held it out to Big Foot.

But Big Foot didn’t take it. Instead, he shook his head and said, “Thought you would have skipped town by now.”

“This here’s my home, Mr. Big Foot, sir.” Doc Haley stared at the ground like he’d done something wrong.

Big Foot plucked the hair tonic bottle from Doc’s hand and put it in his pocket. He turned to go.

Doc Haley cleared his throat. “Excuse me, Sheriff?”

Big Foot turned back.

Doc Haley looked him straight in the eye. “Are you gonna pay for that?”

Big Foot didn’t move. A muscle in his cheek twitched as he finally put his hand into his pocket and dug out a quarter. He let the coin drop onto the tile floor.