GodPretty in the Tobacco Field (10 page)

“Maybe I'll get started on it,” I punched back, wishing he'd tell me that something more.

His eyes twinkled. “Better hurry 'fore the president beats you to it.” He turned back to picking. “Let's go, girl. You look out for the snakes and I'll take the suckers off today. And maybe check on some of those flowers, too. Seems like we're feeding too many blooms out there . . .”

Gunnar always had me leave the blooms on a few stalks for next year's seeds, but I could see we might have too many this year. The sweet blossom left the plant weak and spindly, stole the food from the leaves.

“I want to hurry so I can work on my own burley today.”
My ticket out of here
.

“Don't worry, we'll find time. I see it's doing real good over there, and it's only the second day of August.”

That cheered me up. It was something.
A lot
. And I suddenly felt lucky looking out at the tall plants. It was hard to believe Gunnar'd broke down and told me I could use a patch of my parents' land to grow my own tobacco to try to win the prize. I was sure it was just another plan of his to keep the devil from nipping at my heels this summer—and to keep me away from the Shake King scum he hated. Like him, some folks around here thought hanging out with them would be like tossing your Holy Spirit into a bag of angry church snakes. So I made sure to present a big fuss and all, telling him how much more work it cost me.

Wasn't much to its postage stamp size, but heck, those teensy heirloom seeds I'd found in a jar out in the barn were going to get me to the 1969 Kentucky State Fair and further!

I glanced sideways and caught Rainey looking at me. The wind kicked up a big breeze carrying the growls from Gunnar's tractor, the drone laddering up into the mountain pines.

A torn scrap from Baby Jane's fortune-teller landed near my feet.

I picked up the paper and triumphantly wagged it at Rainey. He smiled as I put the drawing of Baby Jane's egg basket into my pocket.

Overhead, a kaleidoscope of butterflies dipped for the tobacco honey, quivering above the pinkish blooms before flittering away.

Rainey turned on his tiny transistor radio. Sam Cooke crooned “Teenage Sonata.” “
My lips, my lips can only kiss you
” softened the long August day.

I grabbed my tobacco knife from the table and cut off a stalk's trumpet blossoms and tossed them into a small heap, leaving them to lie there like sugar-pink tutus.

Rainey wiped his brow, bent over, and pulled off suckers that would weaken the plant, throwing them onto a pile behind him. He stopped to inspect for worms, plucking a big one off and into the bucket of water.

I snapped off a bloom and it landed on his hunched shoulders. Rainey jerked upright, startled, and I couldn't help but giggle. Mischievously, he lurched forward, swatting me with two elephant leaves.

I disappeared into the tobacco rows, topping flowers like some sort of swashbuckler hippie wearing a psychedelic dress over her new black Saturday undies.

Soon, Rainey's laughter climbed onto mine, and the hot Kentucky breezes lifted a child's song to the surrounding hills. For a good five minutes we abandoned our work and chased each other through the tobacco rows, scattering up sugar-pink tutus and lost youth—a tender youth lost to hard work under a hard sun and old people's hard thoughts and prejudices.

“H
urry it.” Gunnar thumped the wood with a hard fist. “Only you. Rainey can't go.” Gunnar smacked again. “It's not his shopping day and I need you to run to the Feed and pick me up a quart of oil for my tractor,” he yelled from outside the bathroom door that afternoon. “
Now
.”

It was the first Saturday in August—Town Day—and I'd forgot all about it after what he did this morning with Baby Jane's fortune. I had been calling back to him to send Rainey.

“Just a sec, Gunnar, I—I'm tending my . . . menstruation!” I fibbed for a little more time to scrub my hands.

Quickly, he thudded downstairs and shouted from the kitchen. “
Now
.”

When I knew I couldn't make him wait much longer, I went down to the kitchen. Gunnar stood at the sink looking out at the fields.

“Take that fifty cents on the table, RubyLyn,” he said, not bothering to look at me.

I grabbed the change and dropped it into my dress pocket.

“Pick up my oil and a loaf of bread. You've been going through loaves quicker than we can get to town . . . Go on and don't tarry.” He shot out the back door.

I hurried upstairs and brushed my hair, moving over to my dresser mirror, inspecting. I fiddled with my aunt's old bobby pins and tucked my straggly bangs back with one. Useless, I pulled it out and snatched my purse from the sill. My sketching of Baby Jane's basket fell out. I felt a stab, remembering the pretty fortune scattered over the fields, her face crushed as she held up the torn-off piece of the beautiful hen.

I placed the drawing back into Mama's purse and buried it inside the lining. Then I fished out my kissing fortune and scooped up a loose nickel I'd been saving.

Twenty minutes later I strolled off Royal Road and onto Main Street toward town. I glanced up at Heart Tack Hill, named because my first-grade teacher's, Mrs. Tack's, ticker gave out one day while she chased a truant kid up that very hill. I spotted two young boys at the top throwing down a rain shower of pebbly rocks.

My school, L.B.J. School of Nameless, the name folks gave it after the president came, sat on the little hill, only a few minutes' walk to town. It was a small school with about a hundred kids squeezed into nine small rooms that sometimes doubled up their lower grades.

In a few minutes I spied the Shake King's tall sign. “All part of the ‘Happy Pappy' government program—the Shake King is—with its picnic table for the lazy to bird-eye other lazy men across the street, lined up for their free money at the spanking-new courthouse built by a beehive of government workers on draws, too,” Gunnar'd said. And then always added, “Humph . . . just another coat rack for the miscreants and hippie folk to hang.”

Some thought it made Nameless bigger. Now, the one-street town stretched from the Shake King lording above in a lot by itself at one end, with the Nameless Community Bank on the other end of town—a very different lord every first of the month.

I didn't much like walking past the Shake King, but you had to if you were going into town from Gunnar's place. You never knew what kind of folks were going to be milling around. Whether someone would make fun of you, give a friendly wave or whistle, or even curse you.

Nameless's town whores, Dusty and Dirty Durbin, sat atop the picnic table, smoking, slurping down icy colas and watching the road for their next job. Their mama ran away when they were knee-high, and their daddy died in the mines when they were teens, leaving them to fend for themselves in the company of a blind, ailing grandma.

I dropped my gaze to the ground.

Someone called my name. Once. Twice.

I dared to look up. It was Molly with her baby on her hip. She'd been a grade ahead of me and dropped out to get hitched and have her baby. We always got along because she liked to read, same as me. And sometimes she'd pass me an old book, or I'd loan her one of mine that Rose had given me.

I'd snuck her
Peyton Place.
Rose had thrown it in the trashcan out in the Feed's parking lot after she saw a few of the pages ripped and its cover missing. When no one was looking, I'd dug it out.

After church, me and Molly always tried to whisper about what we'd read. That time we didn't do much talking, only red-faced giggling until Gunnar snatched me back to the truck.

But Molly hadn't been to church since she married her first cousin, Lewis. The church said Lewis and Molly and their baby couldn't attend—said it was sinful because Molly and Lewis were breaking God's law and Kentucky law.

Molly's daddy got hot about that, busted into the church and demanded the preacher marry his daughter and nephew.

The preacher got angry back, and said, “Wilbur, you'll have to take them someplace else where they allow first-cousin marriages—like up north to New York or New Jersey where it's legal.”

Molly's daddy lit him up with threats.

Preacher smacked his Bible onto the pulpit, thundering. “No 'tucky kin is a'marrying another 'tucky kin in my church or anywhere else on Kentucky soil!”

One church member stood up, and said, “We ain't gonna keep our race strong with inbreds!”

Another man popped up, “He's right, Wilbur, we ain't letting that happen again.”

A woman sassed, “Shut up, Leland, the preacher don't care about you and your dirty night-ridin' Klan brothers.”

“He better,” Leland snickered back. “We let 'em go a'breeding kin again, we're gonna weaken our race and pollute our church.”

“Sinful . . . illegal,” others murmured.

Old lady Dottie McCoy joined in. “And don't forget 'bout the feuds 'tween us McCoys and Hatfields—what happened when they tried to breed kinfolk.
Damn inbreds
. . . Sorry, Preacher,” she'd laid the apology wide, “would up an' swap loyalties to make their family bigger. Weren't fair.”

Preacher tried to calm the congregation. “Wilbur, quiet down. Dottie, we're not here to discuss old family feuds. And Leland and the rest of you,
sit down,
we're not gonna discuss the KKK on the Lord's day!”

Molly's daddy wouldn't listen and puffed up even bigger. The preacher had to send for the sheriff to come by and haul him out of Sunday service.

Later, Molly's daddy found a Virginia preacher to marry the cousins and drove them across the state lines. But our church still wouldn't let them come back, and when their sweet baby girl was born blind and missing two nubs, the church said God had punished them for their incestuous ways.

 

I waved back at Molly and her little one. Molly grinned and raised the baby's hand, wriggling it real cute.

The baby girl had a sweet face with Lewis's blond curls and an angel's smile just like her mama. It was sad knowing she'd never see it.
What kind of god keeps you from loving . . . ? What kind of god would punish a little girl like that
? That poor baby didn't pick her parents.

I watched them cut across the street to the grounds of the courthouse, jail, and post office.

I thought about Gunnar wanting me to stay in this nothing-doing town
. How could I ever stay in a town that sells and damns its babies?

I hurried over to the corner of the Feed & Seed. The owner, Mr. Parker, leaned out the door with a small bag. “Do me a favor, RubyLyn, and run this bag down to Apples' for me.”

“Yes, sir.” I took it and walked past French's next door—a vacant hardware store. A truck rumbled by, shaking storefront windows. Old man Erbie Sipes shifted on the bench in front of the building. He lifted the brim of his faded ball cap to smile, then scratched his pencil across the wooden seat.

Erbie lived above French's in a one-room rental, and you could count on him showing up on the bench bright and early, sure as the sun got its morning fire. He earned his draw by sitting on the town's bench tallying the automobiles and trucks that passed through.

Erbie never went to school, but he knew numbers and things no one else knew. A little man with a big-sky memory. Remembering every detail of everything, a good forty years back even. And a lot of times the
Mountain Sentinel News
asked him things so they could write it in their newspaper and know it was right.

“Hey, Erbie,” I said.

“Hey, Miss RubyLyn. Fine weather today. Been out here since 6:03. Yessir, 6:03 . . .” He slapped his knee three times.

I walked on past him and peeked into Althea's, next door, just in case one of the kids from school was getting a haircut. Occasionally I'd drift inside to check out Althea's old hair magazines, sneak peeks at the puffy soft-bonnet hair dryer with the long hose attached that she used for styling females' hair, and her colorful roller collection. No one was there or in Potter's Barber Shop next to it.

I heard the door jingle at Cathy's Diner & Coffee Shop beside Potter's, and an old woman struggled to push it open. I hurried over and held the door for her. Inside, two men sat on stools at the counter, finishing their plate lunches. Old folks sat at a table sipping coffee, smoking, and talking. The other three tables were empty.

The old woman mumbled a thanks and pointed next door at Sue's. I rushed over and opened that door. She hobbled inside Sue's Notions and Repairs, squeezing past an old sewing machine and thread and stuff that was tightly packed into a narrow aisle.

The buzzer sounded on Apples' Apothecary, the last of the shops that butted up to Sue's. Willow Patton walked out with her weekly bag of tonics and cures for her latest ailment. I went inside and dropped off the bag to the druggist.

Back outside, I nosed sideways in each store again to see if anyone I knew was shopping in the seven businesses.

In front of the Feed again, I looked across the street at the commons. I didn't see anyone there either, just Bur Hancock coming out of his jail and someone going into the post office on the other side of it. Bur took a step toward me like he might come over, but only lifted his hand in a friendly hello.

I waved back and headed into the Feed. The door banged my arrival, rattling its old tin Pepsi advertisement: a cigarette-puffing James Dean told folks the cola promised
more Fun, more bounce to Dance
.

Mr. Parker gave a grateful nod and bent his head back to three other men near the shop window. “
Vietnam
. . .
Crop
. . .
War
. . .
Weather
. . .” The men staggered words into a lazy conversation.

Nearby, a rack of bib overalls hid a group of huddled women, but not their hushed voices ghosting up through their cigarette smoke. It grew quiet when they saw me, and I knew they got word about the new Stump baby and my prediction.

I made my way up to the mail-order catalogs at the register. My home economics and arithmetic teacher broke away from the women. “RubyLyn, I'm looking forward to seeing you back this year.” She tugged at the collar of her latest dress she'd sewn—a fine bluebell-print cotton that looked as nice as those in the catalog. “Be here 'fore you know it.” She studied me. “You come see me if you need some paper and pencils, okay? Thread, too, though I know you don't have the fancy for that.”

“Thank you, ma'am.” I figured she was checking to see if I was coming back for my junior year. Some of the kids, even ones younger than me, never bothered, ducking out before their freshman year. They'd say they didn't have transportation, their folks wanted them to work at home, or the girls got knocked up like Molly.

She glanced over her shoulder and then back at me. “Takes a smart brain to stay in school.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“I know you have those smarts. Seen it in your drawings.”

The old teacher was one of the smartest people I knew and everyone's favorite. On a student's seventeenth birthday, she'd present them with a silver dollar for a taste of a finer life, her reminder that such could be had from getting all your learning. I imagined she had coal buckets full of shiny dollars stashed away in her old house way out on Briar Road, to have given out all that money over the years.

I wanted to say something exact and smart for her and then I messed up by looking down and seeing the
Sears Summer
mail-order catalog with the pretty blond woman standing on some faraway beach in her brown and white skirted bathing suit.

I spouted stupidly, “I saw an advertisement for paper dresses, ma'am, in one of Rose Law's old magazines. I wonder if we can make some this year? They said they're real economical, too.”

“I believe I heard a woman's paper gown caught on fire . . . Yes, I believe her husband got too close with his cigarette and that pretty paper dress lit up lickety-split,” she said, and nodded toward the customers. “That wouldn't do in Nameless, now would it, RubyLyn?”

I looked over her shoulder and saw most of the folks had cigarettes. “No, ma'am. But it sure would help with my laundry chores.”

Her eyes softened. “Take that imagination and get your smarts, Miss Bishop.” She lightly tapped my head before going out the door.

Better to take my art and get out of Nameless,
I thought.

I picked up a small shopping basket and strolled through the Feed's two aisles. I studied a row of bins, half pretending to look at the wooden one filled with toys: yo-yos, a few spinning tops, small colorful knapsacks filled with ball 'n' jacks, and the latest: clacker balls. Carter Crockett had a set of the knockers. He'd hold them by a ring in the center, click-clacking, banging the red plastic balls held together at each end of the rope till it burnt up your nerves. Carter liked to knock them especially hard, up high, on the side, and one day the balls shattered and hit his mouth, loosening a front tooth. He didn't see a dentist, so he lost it. Henny declared him “cuter.”