The Bottoms (23 page)

“That’s awful, Grandma.”

She laughed. “Well, I don’t think so. I’d rather be the turds the worms leave than slow rot in dry ground. Here the earth’s held down by trees and roots and kept damp by creeks, rivers, and a high-up waterline. ’Cause of that, I wanted to be here. And I hadn’t had no real time with you and Tom. Earlene’s boys are in their teens, and they’ve got plans of their own, and I hope long as I live never to pick another ball of cotton nor another berry neither, ’less I’m just pickin’ for myself to eat.”

“I’m almost twelve.”

“What?”

“You said Aunt Earlene’s kids are in their teens. I’m almost in mine.”

“He is old,” Tom said.

“I suppose he is,” Grandma said. “But your Mama and Daddy have kept you close to the house, Harry. They ain’t made you work like Earlene’s young’ns had to work and are gonna have to work out there in that California. I think they won’t find it near as promisin’ as they think. I tried to tell ’em, but it’s their business, you know.”

“I’ll work.”

“Know you will. But you don’t need to work like them … Why ain’t you gettin’ any schoolin’?”

“School ain’t got a teacher.”

“Say it ain’t. Well, I’ve done some teachin’ from time to time. Not that my English is all that good, but it can get better when I want it to. I wasn’t so dead-set on doin’ little to nothin’ right now, I’d be your teacher. I can do that anyway. Back at the house. We can do readin’, writin’, and ’rithmatic without any ole teacher. I can teach you and Thomasina a few things.”

“We ain’t gonna start right away, are we?” Tom asked.

“Naw.”

“Lookee there, Grandma,” I said. “A big ole cottonmouth moccasin.”

A black head was poking out of the brown water, slipping close to the bank. A moccasin always made my skin crawl.

Grandma picked up the shotgun and let loose with one barrel. The moccasin’s head disappeared.

“Never could stand those nasty sonsabitches,” Grandma said.

The leaves had fallen on and all around us, almost thick as a blanket.

Tom, full of biscuits, rabbit, and gravy, warmed by the soft earth and made cozy by the blowing leaves, curled up and tried to listen for a while, but was soon fast asleep.

Grandma said, “Ain’t she precious.”

“When she’s asleep.”

“Harry, your Daddy sure didn’t want to talk about Mose much. Is there somethin’ wrong about Mose?”

“No ma’am.”

“You’re lyin’ to me, Harry. I can tell. But I bet it’s ’cause you’re doin’ it for your Daddy. That’s an understandable lie.”

I didn’t contradict her. I took a keen interest in my fishing pole.

“Your Daddy wants you to keep a secret, I figure there’s a good reason. Jacob’s a good man, if a little hot-tempered.”

“Daddy? I ain’t never seen any real temper. He’s fussed at me and Tom from time to time. And he poured water on my head once for sassin’ Mama, and we’ve got some spankin’s for stuff we done, but I ain’t never seen him really lose his temper.”

“He’s got it. I guess truth is he ain’t hot-tempered, he’s just bad-tempered. He don’t lose his temper easy, so hot ain’t right. But it’s a bad one when it goes off.”

I doubted this too, but didn’t say anything.

“Hope you don’t never see it, ’cause it’s an ugly thing. And hope you don’t have it yourself. A temper really ain’t worth nothin’. Jacob’s prideful too. In a good way mostly. But somethin’s always tamperin’ with your pride, and if you got too much of it, it ain’t pride no more. It’s prideful. Take a fall from that, it’s hard to get up. I’ve seen it. But there ain’t no better-meanin’ man than your Daddy.”

“Grandma. Do you know Red Woodrow?”

“You met him?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“He used to be one of your Mama’s suitors. She had a lot of ’em. It might be hard to figure now, lookin’ at me, but so did I in my day. But your Mama had them all on a string. Your Daddy and Red. But she met Red first, and they were pretty serious.”

“Really serious?”

“Uh huh. But Red he had ways. Just a little off center. Folks said he done mean things to animals, but I don’t know that’s true. People like to talk, especially they don’t like someone. One thing’s for sure, his home wasn’t none too good. Not just poor folks. Hell, we were all poor and are poorer now for the most part. But his Daddy whupped him, and his Mama she liked to go with the men.”

“Mama said he was raised mostly by Miss Maggie?”

“What raisin’ he got that woman done it, but he didn’t get much. She wasn’t in any position to do it, and her being colored, that didn’t give her a lot of say. Red mostly raised himself up, and it wasn’t a good raisin’ lots of the time.”

“Mama said he had two half-brothers by Miss Maggie.”

“That’s the story. I don’t know there’s anything to it.”

“When Mama met Daddy, was that when she quit seein’ Red?”

“Like I said, she had ’em both on a string. But when she met Jacob, there was sparks. Then they went on some barge ride, somethin’ your Mama wasn’t supposed to be on, by the way. I’d told her to stay home, but she run off and didn’t listen. Somehow, Red ended up in the water in a suck hole, and your Daddy saved him. After that, Red and your Daddy, who had been good friends, never did see eye to eye. And your Mama lost interest in Red. He turned kind’a rough. Or maybe the true Red just showed up. He started tattooin’ on his arm the women he’d conquered.”

“Conquered?”

“Was intimate with. You know what I mean, Harry?”

“Yes ma’am. I think so … He did it himself? The tattooin’.”

“Yep. With something sharp and some charcoal. He’d put their name and a date for when … You know. It was crude-lookin’ and a crude subject. He got so he wore his shirtsleeves rolled up so you could see who was on his arm and the date he done what he did.”

“You’d think women wouldn’t have nothin’ to do with someone like that,” I said.

“Men and women are hard to figure, Harry.”

“He wears his sleeves rolled down now, even in hot weather.”

“Good. Maybe he ain’t so proud of it now.”

“Was he like that you think ’cause he was raised hard?”

“That sure had something to do with it. But let me tell you somethin’. Your Daddy, his family, they weren’t so good neither. Jacob turned out good. So that ain’t no excuse for Red. Your Daddy’s mother died when he was eight years old. The old man never did cotton to schoolin’ much, and when the wife died, he took Jacob out of what schoolin’ he was getting and put him to work in the cotton fields. Lot of folks did that back then with their kids, and they do it now. Had to make a livin’. It was survival. But the old man took to beatin’ on your Daddy, and bad. Once your Daddy got sick in the cotton fields. Got hurt actually. Fell somehow, hit his head on a rock and blood come out of his ears. I was a young woman then, just married to your grandfather, so I heard about it. I didn’t see it, but knew some did see it, since it happened right out in front of God and everybody.

“Your Daddy had a spotted pinto pony. I remember it like it was yesterday. He rode it home, and fell off in the yard, he was so hurt. Jacob’s Daddy took a horse whip, and beat that boy like he stole somethin’, sent him running back to the fields, chasin’ him the whole way. And he made Jacob put in a day.

“Your Daddy’s Daddy married again. Or really he took to shackin’ up. The woman was Red’s mother, and Red come to live with them for a time, and they were like brothers, your Daddy and Red.

“But Red’s mother took up with some other fella about nine years later, run off with him, and left Red with the old man and Jacob. Not that she ever cared about Red for one moment. She had a couple other kids too. Girls, I think. They were by Red’s
Daddy. I don’t know whatever happened to them. He also had some kids by that colored woman, Miss Maggie. Or so they say.

“Your Daddy grew real close to Red. Kind of a protector. Jacob’s Daddy was gonna beat Red over somethin’, and Jacob, who was sixteen or seventeen at the time, picked up a board and told his Daddy his beatin’ days were over. And the old man backed off.

“So, Jacob saved Red twice. Once from a beatin’, and once from drownin’. Jacob left home that day, and so did Red. Wasn’t long after that Red started seein’ your Mama, then of course your Daddy met her and things changed. They were like brothers, Red and your Daddy, and there ain’t nothin’ worse than kin or near kin fallin’ out.”

“What happened to my Grandpa? Daddy’s Daddy?”

“Somebody killed him.”

“I never heard Daddy say that.”

“What’s he say about his Daddy?”

“Nothin’.”

“Well, then you ain’t heard him say nothin’, and inside that nothin’ is this somethin’. He was murdered.”

“Who done it?”

“No one knows. He was found in his bed, his throat cut from ear to ear. He worked at the sawmill when he wasn’t drunk. He’d already lost three fingers there, and he wasn’t makin’ any real money, just scratchin’ shit with the chickens. So there wasn’t nothin’ there for anyone to rob.”

“Grandma, I thought ladies weren’t supposed to cuss.”

“They aren’t. And it ain’t nice to interrupt a story. Like I was sayin’ about your Grandpa. It’s more likely in my mind someone killed him because he was a rotten sonofabitch. That’s a harsh thing to say, Harry, but them’s the stone-cold sober facts. I figure he rode one of them coloreds out at the mill a little too hard, and the man waited until he went to bed, slipped in, and
cut his throat. Wasn’t nothin’ stole no one knew about. Then again, wasn’t nothin’ in the house besides corn liquor and some crackers anyway. Whoever done it, it couldn’t have happened to a dirtier bastard than that old man. He may have been your Grandpa, Harry, but you’re lucky you didn’t never have no truck with him.”

“Daddy says when someone’s killed, people always think it’s a colored. It don’t have to be a colored killed my Grandpa, does it?”

“No. ’Course not. But I hope it was. ’Cause he deserved to die by a colored’s hand, way he treated them. Hell, he just deserved to die.”

“Grandma?”

“Yes.”

“Was Mama’s name tattooed on Red’s arm?”

“That isn’t somethin’ I’d know about, Harry.”

“Grandma, Daddy says you’ve always been good to colored. He says that ain’t like most folks. Why do you feel that way?”

“First off, I don’t know what good to colored is. I try to treat people right, but I’d be a liar I said I treated them just the same. I don’t spend that much time with them, and I ain’t got any real colored friends. I don’t know that much about the lives of the ones I do know. So all I can say is I don’t hate colored. That’s somethin’ worth sayin’, though. Let me ask you a question.”

“Okay.”

“Do you hate colored?”

“No ma’am.”

“Why don’t you?”

“I don’t know … I guess Daddy and Mama.”

“It was the same for me. Someone somewhere figured some truth out and passed it along. I got it. Your Mama got it, and now you got it. And Jacob, well, he once told me how he come by his thinkin’.”

“He told me the story,” I said.

“Did he tell you that we all, no matter what we think, slide a little backward now and then? Did he tell you somethin’ comes up missin’, and there’s a white man and a colored man standin’ nearby, most of us are gonna think it’s the colored that did it? That he’s the one shiftless? Ain’t none of us that damn good, Harry. We all got a lot of learnin’ to do.”

“But a colored man could have stole it, couldn’t he?”

“He sure could have. But it ain’t the thing to expect of him just because he is colored. You get what I’m sayin’, Harry?”

“Yes ma’am.”

We fished for a time, then Tom woke, shook off the blanket of leaves, and we moved to another place.

I was sort of worried Grandma would try to take us off to where Mose was. I could tell she was curious about what was going on there, but she fooled me. We stayed pretty close to the house, even though we changed spots two or three times, and by nightfall we had caught a dozen fish or so and Grandma had shot the head off another moccasin.

We got back to the house about supper time. I cleaned the fish, which were mostly hand-sized perch, and Grandma fried them up with hush puppies. She also made a pie with fig preserves, Mama not believing it could be done and taste right.

We ate the fish, all the while being told to watch for bones by Grandma and Mama, then we sucked down the pie, which turned out delicious. Afterward, we went out on the sleeping porch to sit or swing or lie on the floor until we had digested enough to move again.

N
ext day the fun was over and we were back to regular. We did chores, and after lunch Grandma brought out one of her cardboard suitcases. Inside were six books. The Bible,
Ivanhoe, Huckleberry Finn, Last of the Mohicans, The Red Badge of Courage
, and
Call of the Wild
. She had me read aloud to her from
Ivanhoe
.

She kept saying how she just loved bein’ read to.

When I finished a chapter, it was Tom’s turn. Tom had a lot of trouble with the words, and I wanted to just go on and read it because the story was so good, but Grandma insisted Tom do it. Tom got about halfway through the chapter and gave up.