A Painted House Page 7

Chapter 7

  Saturday morning. At sunrise, with Mexicans on one side and the Spruills on the other, we were in the trailer moving toward the fields. I kept close to my father, for fear that the monster Hank might come after me again. I hated all the Spruills that morning, perhaps with the exception of Trot, my lone defender. They ignored me. I hoped they were ashamed of themselves.

  I tried not to think about the Spruills as we moved through the fields. It was Saturday. A magical day for all the poor souls who toiled the land. On the Chandler farm, we'd work half a day, then head for town to join all the other farmers and their families who went there. ! to buy food and supplies, to mix and mingle along Main Street, to catch the gossip, to escape for a few hours the drudgery of the cotton patch. The Mexicans and the hill people went, too. The men would gather in groups in front of the Tea Shoppe and the Co-op and compare crops and tell stories about floods. The women would pack into Pop and Pearl's and take forever buying a few groceries. The kids were allowed to roam the sidewalks on Main Street and its neighboring alleys until four o'clock, that wonderful hour when the Dixie opened for the matinee.

  When the trailer stopped, we hopped off and found our cotton sacks. I was half asleep, not paying attention to anything in particular, when the sweetest voice said, "Good mornin', Luke. " It was Tally, just standing there smiling at me. It was her way of saying she was sorry for yesterday.

  Because I was a Chandler, I was capable of deep stubbornness. I turned my back to her and walked away. I told myself I hated all Spruills. I attacked the first row of cotton as if I might just wipe out forty acres before lunch. After a few minutes, though, I was tired. I was lost in the stalks, in the dark, and I could still hear her voice and see her smile.

  She was only ten years older than I was.

  The Saturday bath was a ritual I hated more than all others. It took place after lunch, under the stern supervision of my mother. The tub, hardly big enough for me, was used later in the day by each member of the family. It was kept in a remote corner of the back porch, shielded from view by an old bedsheets.

  First, I had to haul the water from the pump to the back porch, where I filled the tub about a third full. This took eight trips with a bucket, and I was exhausted before the bath began. Then I pulled the bedsheets across the porch and stripped naked with remarkable speed. The water was very cold.

  With a bar of store-bought soap and a washcloth, I worked furiously to remove dirt and make bubbles and otherwise cloud the water so my mother couldn't see my privates when she came to direct matters. She appeared first to collect my dirty clothes, then to bring me a clean change. Then she went straight for the ears and neck. In her hands the washcloth became a weapon. She scraped my tender skin as if the soil I collected working in the fields offended her. Throughout the process, she continued to marvel at how dirty I could get.

  When my neck was raw, she attacked my hair as if it were filled with lice and gnats. She poured cold water from the bucket over my head to rinse off the soap. My humiliation was complete when she finished scouring my arms and feet-mercifully, she left the midsection for me.

  The water was muddy when I hopped out-a week's worth of dirt collected from the Arkansas Delta. I pulled the plug and watched it seep through the cracks of the porch as I toweled off and stepped into my clean overalls. I felt fresh and clean and five pounds lighter, and I was ready for town.

  Pappy decided that his truck would make only one run to Black ()ak. That meant that Gran and my mother would ride in the front with him and my father and I would ride in the back with all ten Mexicans. Getting packed into a box didn't bother the Mexicans at all, but it sure irritated me.

  As we drove away, I watched the Spruills as they knocked down poles and unhitched ropes and hurried about the business of freeing their old truck so they could get to town. Everyone was busy but Hank, who was eating something in the shade.

  To prevent the dust from boiling over the fenders and choking us in the back, Pappy drove less than five miles per hour down our road. While it was thoughtful of him, it didn't help matters much. We were hot and suffocating. The Saturday bath was a ritual in rural Arkansas. In Mexico, apparently, it was not.

  "A Painted House"

  On Saturday, some farm families arrived in town by noon. Pappy thought it was sinful to spend too much time enjoying Saturday, so we took our time getting there. During the winter, he even threatened to avoid town, except for church on Sunday. My mother said he once went a month without leaving the farm, and this included a boycott of church because the preacher had somehow offended him. It didn't take much to offend Pappy. But we were lucky. A lot of sharecroppers never left the farm. They didn't have money for groceries and didn't have a car to get to town. And there were some renters like us and landowners who seldom went to town. Mr. Clovis Beckly from Caraway hadn't been to town in fourteen years, according to Gran. And he hadn't been to church since before the First War. I'd heard folks openly praying for him during revivals.

  I loved the traffic and the crowded sidewalks and the uncertainty of whom you might see next. I liked the groups of Mexicans camped under shade trees, eating ice cream and greeting their countrymen from other farms in excited bursts of Spanish. I liked the crowds of strangers, hill people who would be gone before long. Pappy told me once that when he was in St. Louis before the First War, there were half a million other people there and that he got lost just walking down a street.

  That would never happen to me. When I walked down the streets in St. Louis, everybody would know me.

  I followed my mother and Gran to Pop and Pearl Watson's. The men went to the Co-op because that's where all the farmers went on Saturday afternoon. I could never determine exactly what they did there, besides gripe about the price of cotton and fret over the weather.

  Pearl was busy at the cash register. "Hi, Mrs. Watson," I said when I could get close enough. The store was packed with women and Mexicans.

  "Well, hello, Luke," she said as she winked at me. "How's the cotton?" she asked. It was the same question you heard over and over.

  "Pickin' well," I said, as if I'd hauled in a ton.

  It took Gran and my mother an hour to buy five pounds of flour, two pounds of sugar, two pounds of coffee, a bottle of vinegar, a pound of table salt, and two bars of soap. The aisles were crowded with women more concerned with saying hello than with buying food. They talked about their gardens and the weather and church the next day, and about who was definitely having a baby and who might be. They prattled on about a funeral here, a revival there, an upcoming wedding.

  Not one word about the Cardinals.

  My only chore in town was to haul the groceries back to the truck. When this was accomplished, I was free to roam Main Street and its alleys without being supervised. I moved with the languid foot traffic toward the north end of Black Oak, past the Co-op, past the drugstore and the hardware store and the Tea Shoppe. Along the sidewalk, packs of people stood gossiping, with no intention of moving. Telephones were scarce, and there were only a few televisions in the county, so Saturday was meant for catching up on the latest news and events.

  I found my friend Dewayne Pinter trying to convince his mother that he should be free to roam. Dewayne was a year older than I was but still in the second grade. His father let him drive their tractor around the farm, and this elevated his status among all second graders at the Black Oak School. The Pinters were Baptists and Cardinals fans, but for some unknown reason, Pappy still didn't like them.

  "Good afternoon, Luke," Mrs. Pinter said to me.

  "Hello, Mrs. Pinter. "

  "Where's your mother?" she asked, looking behind me.

  "I think she's still at the drugstore. I'm not sure. "

  With that, Dewayne was able to tear himself away. If I could be trusted to walk the streets alone, then so could he. As we walked off, Mrs. Pinter was still barking instructions. We went to the Dixie, where the older kids were hanging
out and waiting for four o'clock. In my pocket I had a few coins-five cents for the matinee, five cents for a Coca-Cola, three cents for popcorn. My mother had given me I he money as an advance against what I would earn picking cotton. I was supposed to pay it back one day, but she and I both knew it would never happen. If Pappy tried to collect it, he would have to step around Mom.

  Evidently Dewayne had had a better week with the cotton than I had. He had a pocket full of dimes and couldn't wait to show them off. His family also rented land, and they owned twenty acres outright, a lot more than the Chandlers.

  A freckle-faced girl named Brenda lingered near us, trying to start a conversation with Dewayne. She'd told all of her friends that she wanted to marry him. She was making his life unbearable by following him around at church, shadowing him every Saturday up and down Main Street, and always asking if he would sit by her at the movies.

  Dewayne despised her. When a pack of Mexicans walked by, we got lost in the middle of them.

  "A Painted House"

  A fight erupted behind the Co-op, a popular spot for the older boys to gather and trade punches. It happened every Saturday, and nothing electrified Black Oak like a good fight. The crowd pushed its way through a wide alley next to the Co-op, and in the rush I heard someone say, "I'll bet it's a Sisco. "

  My mother had warned me against watching fights behind the Co-op, but it wasn't a strict prohibition because I knew she wouldn't be there. No proper female would dare to be caught watching a fight. Dewayne and I snaked our way through the mob, anxious to see some violence.

  The Siscos were dirt-poor sharecroppers who lived less than a mile from town. They were always around on Saturday. No one was sure how many kids were in the family, but they could all fight. Their father was a drunk who beat them, and their mother had once whipped a fully armed deputy who was trying to arrest her husband. Broke his arm and his nose. The deputy left town in disgrace. The oldest Sisco was in prison for killing a man in Jonesboro.

  The Sisco kids didn't go to school or church, so I managed to avoid them. Sure enough, when we got close and peeked through the spectators, there was Jerry Sisco punching a stranger in the face.

  "Who's that?" I asked Dewayne. The crowd was yelling for each fighter to hurry up and maim the other.

  "Don't know," Dewayne said. "Probably a hillbilly. "

  That made sense. With the county full of hill people picking cotton, it was only logical that the Siscos would start a fight with someone who didn't know them. The locals knew better. The stranger's face was puffy, and there was blood dripping from his nose. Jerry Sisco ripped a sharp right to his teeth and knocked the man down.

  A whole gang of Siscos and their ilk were in one corner, laughing, and probably drinking. They were shaggy and dirty with ragged clothes and only a few had shoes. Their toughness was legendary. They were lean and hungry and fought with every dirty trick in the hook. The year before, Billy Sisco had almost killed a Mexican in a fight behind the gin.

  On the other side of the makeshift arena was a group of hill people, all-yelling for their man-"Doyle," it turned out-to get up and do something. Doyle was rubbing his chin when he jumped up and made a charge. He managed to ram his head into Jerry Sisco's stomach, sending both of them to the ground. This brought a cheer from the hill people. The rest of us wanted to cheer, too, but we didn't want to upset the Siscos. This was their game, and they'd come after anybody.

  The two fighters clutched and clawed and rolled around in the dirt like wild animals, as the yelling got louder. Doyle suddenly cocked his right hand and landed a perfect punch in the middle of Jerry Sisco's face, sending blood everywhere. Jerry was still for a split second, and we were all secretly hoping that perhaps a Sisco had met his match. Doyle was about to land another punch when Billy Sisco abruptly charged from the pack and kicked Doyle square in the back. Doyle shrieked like a wounded dog and rolled to the ground, where both Siscos were immediately on him, kicking and pounding him.

  Doyle was about to be slaughtered. Though there was nothing fair about it, it was simply the risk you ran if you fought a Sisco. The hill people were silent, and the locals watched without taking a step forward.

  Then the two Siscos dragged Doyle to his feet, and with all the patience of an executioner, Jerry kicked him in the groin. Doyle screamed and dropped to the ground. The Siscos were delirious with laughter.

  The Siscos were in the process of picking him up again when Mr. Hank Spruill, he of the tree-trunk neck, stepped out from the crowd and hit Jerry hard, causing him to fall. Quick as a cat, Billy Sisco threw a left jab that popped Hank in the jaw, but a curious thing happened. The jab didn't phase Hank Spruill. He turned around and grabbed Billy by his hair and without any apparent effort spun him around and flung him into the grouping of Siscos in the crowd. From the strewn pack came a new Sisco, Bobby, aged no more than sixteen, but just as mean as his brothers.

  Three Siscos against Hank Spruill.

  As Jerry was getting to his feet, Hank, with unbelievable speed, kicked him in the ribs so hard that we heard cracking. Then Hank turned and slapped Bobby with the back of his hand, knocking him down, and kicked him in the teeth. By this time Billy was making another lunge, and Hank, like a circus strongman, lifted the much skinnier boy into the air and flipped him into the side of the Co-op, where he crashed loudly, rattling the boards and windows, before falling to the pavement on his head. I couldn't have tossed a baseball any easier.

  When Billy hit the ground, Hank took him by the throat and dragged him back into the center of the arena, where Bobby was on all fours, struggling to get to his feet. Jerry was crumpled to one side, clutching his ribs and whimpering.

  Hank kicked Bobby between the legs. When the boy yelped, Hank let out a hideous laugh.

  "A Painted House"

  He then clutched Billy by the throat and began lashing his face with the back of his right hand. Blood was spurting everywhere; it covered Billy's face and was pouring down his chest.

  Finally, Hank released Billy and turned to the rest of the Siscos. "Anybody want some more!" he shouted. "Come on! Get you some!"

  The other Siscos cowered behind one another while their three heroes floundered in the dirt.

  The fight should've been over, but Hank had other plans. With delight and deliberation, he kicked each of the three in their faces and heads until they stopped moving and groaning. The crowd began to disperse.

  "Let's go," a man said from behind me. "You kids don't need to see this. " But I couldn't move.

  Then Hank found a broken piece of an old two-by-four. For a moment the crowd stopped its exit to watch with morbid curiosity.

  When Hank hit Jerry across the nose, someone in the crowd said, "Oh my God. "

  Another voice in the mob said something about finding the sheriff.

  "Let's get outta here," an old farmer said, and the crowd began leaving again, this time a little quicker.

  Hank still wasn't finished. His face was red with anger; his eyes flashed like a demon's. He kept pounding them until the old two-by-four began to shatter into small pieces.

  I didn't see any of the other Spruills in the crowd. As the beating became a butchering, everyone fled. No one in Black Oak wanted to tangle with the Siscos. And now nobody wanted to face this madman from the hills.

  When we were back on the sidewalk, those of us who'd seen the fight were silent. It was still happening. I wondered if Hank would beat them until they were dead.

  Neither Dewayne nor I said a word as we darted through the crowd and ran toward the movie house.

  The Saturday afternoon movie was a special time for all of us farm kids. We didn't have televisions, and entertainment was considered sinful. For two hours we were transported from the harshness of life in the cotton patch to a fantasy land where the good guys always won. Through the movies we learned how criminals operated, how cops caught them, how wars were fought and won, how history was made in th
e Wild West. It was even through a movie that I learned the sad truth that the South had, in fact, not won the Civil War, contrary to what I'd been told both at home and at school.

  But this Saturday the Gene Autry western bored Dewayne and me. Every time there was a fistfight on the screen, I thought of Hank Spruill and could see him still out there behind the Co-op hammering the Siscos. Autry's scuffles were tame compared to the real-life carnage we'd just witnessed. The movie was almost over before I mustered the courage to tell Dewayne.

  "That big hillbilly we saw beat the Siscos?" I whispered. "He's working on our farm. "

  "You know him?" he whispered back, disbelieving.

  "Yep. Know him real well. "

  Dewayne was impressed and wanted to ask more questions, but the place was packed and Mr. Starnes, the manager, enjoyed patrolling the aisles with his flashlight, just looking for trouble. Any kid caught talking would be yanked up by the ear and ejected. Also, Brenda with the freckles had managed to get the seat directly behind Dewayne, making us both uncomfortable.

  There were a few adults sprinkled throughout the audience, but they were mostly town people. Mr. Starnes made the Mexicans sit in the balcony, but it didn't seem to bother them. Only a handful would waste money on a picture show.

  We rushed out at the end, and within minutes we were behind the Co-op again, half-expecting to see the bloody corpses of the Sisco boys. But no one was there. There was no evidence of any fight-no blood, no limbs, no shattered two-by-four.

  Pappy held the opinion that people with self-respect should leave town on Saturday before dark. Bad things happened on Saturday night. Other than the fights, though, I'd never witnessed any true evil. I'd heard there were drinking and dice games behind the gin, and even more fights, but all that was kept out of sight and was engaged in by very few people. Still, Pappy was afraid we'd somehow be contaminated.

  Ricky was the hell-raiser of the Chandler family, and my mother told me that he had the reputation of staying in town too long on Saturday. There was an arrest somewhere in the recent family history, but I could never get the details. She said that Pappy and Ricky had fought for years over what time they should leave. I could remember several occasions when we left without him. I'd cry because I was sure I'd never see him again, then Sunday morning he would be sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee as if nothing had happened. Ricky always came home.

  We met at the truck, which was now surrounded by dozens of other vehicles parked haphazardly around the Baptist church because the farmers were still rolling in. The crowd was thicker along Main Street and seemed to be congregating near the school, where fiddlers and banjo pickers sometimes broke out into bluegrass sessions. I didn't want to leave, and in my opinion there was no hurry to get home.

  "A Painted House"

  Gran and my mother had some last-minute business inside the church, where most of the women found something to do on the day before the Sabbath. From the other side of the truck, I overheard my dad and Pappy talking about a fight. Then I heard the name Sisco, and I became very still. Miguel and some of the Mexicans arrived and wouldn't stop chattering in Spanish, so I missed any further gossip.

  A few minutes later, Stick Powers, one of Black Oak's two deputies, walked over from the street and said hello to Pappy and my father. Stick was supposed to have been a POW in the war, and he walked with a limp, which he claimed was the result of abuse in a German camp. Pappy said he'd never left Craighead County, never heard a shot fired in anger.

  "One of them Sisco boys is near 'bout dead," I heard him say as I moved in closer. It was almost dark now, and no one was watching me.

  "Nothing wrong with that," Pappy said.

  "They say that hillbilly is working out at your place. "

  "I didn't see the fight, Stick," Pappy said, his quick temper already rising. "You got a name?"

  "Hank something or other. "

  "We got lots of somethings and others. "

  "Mind if I ride out tomorrow and look around?" Stick asked.

  "I can't stop you. "

  "No, you can't. " Stick wheeled on his good leg and gave the Mexicans a look as if they were guilty as sin.

  I eased around to the other side of the truck and said, "What was that all about?"

  As usual, when it was something I was not supposed to know or hear, they simply ignored me.

  We rode home in the dark, the lights of Black Oak fading behind us, the cool wind from the road blowing our hair. At first, I wanted to tell my father about the fight, but I couldn't do it in front of the Mexicans. Then I decided not to be a witness. I wouldn't tell anybody since there was no way to win. Any involvement with the Siscos would make my life dangerous, and I didn't want the Spruills to get mad and leave. The picking had hardly begun, and I was already tired of it. And most important, I didn't want Hank Spruill angry with me or my father or Pappy.

  Their old truck was not in our front yard when we arrived home. They were still in town, probably visiting with other hill people.

  After supper, we took our places on the porch as Pappy fiddled with his radio. The Cardinals were at Philadelphia, playing under the lights. Musial came to bat in the top of the second, and I began to dream.