Winter Run (20 page)

As Charlie approached, she looked up sharply. She couldn’t help but recognize him, and the right words just flowed out of her from her upbringing and all the many years of funerals. “Oh, Charlie, I’m glad to see you. But it is such a sad occasion. The professor would be so pleased that you are here to help your mother at this time.”

Then suddenly her voice was hard-edged and rational, not the voice of a dying septuagenarian at all.
“But now what will you do, Charlie? There will be no one here. The professor gone. Matthew and Sally, and me … gone. You moved. Will you still ride around the farm? Or have you left here for good, too?”

Then silence. His mother caught Charlie’s gaze, as if the question had been framed by her, or at least by the two of them, to put him to the test. For the moment the adolescent vanished and was replaced with the surety of Charlie’s childhood. He pulled his shoulders back and said to Mrs. James, and to his mother, too, “I’ll never leave here.”

“Are you so sure, Charlie?” replied the old lady, softly. But then she changed back. “Well, be a help to your mama.” She turned her gaze aside.

Charlie turned also and shuffled back down the hall to the kitchen where in the pantry Matthew was talking to the lawyer about the future, and the professor’s will and Mrs. James.

“We need a timetable for when things will happen, Matthew. But we surely don’t have one. As you know, the university inherits the farm, but I’m not clear when they will take it over, so you need to plan to stay on and keep things under control here until the final plans are made. And heaven knows when that will be. I even heard a rumor that the university doesn’t want the place, what with the upkeep and so on. You and Sally will be paid as usual. Is that all right?” There was a note of urgency, and Charlie stopped. Matthew nodded yes, and the lawyer came past Charlie and went into the dining room.

Matthew and Charlie stood five feet apart in the hall with its old beaded wainscoting and peeling wall-paper. They were the same height and looked at each other on the level. Suddenly the dam broke for Charlie, and he was clutching Matthew, tears pouring from his eyes. He sobbed like a little boy, as Matthew patted him on the back with his huge, hard hand, crooning, “Now Charlie,” over and over, as if the repetition of the name would have the same settling effect that it had when Charlie was a little boy. But now it was somehow different. Maybe it was too late for tears.

By October, Silver Hill was as empty as the Corn House. The university sent a crew out twice a week to maintain the place. The village said it would never work; that empty, the farm would go to wrack and ruin. The university leased out the big field behind the Corn House to a man who wanted to cross a Brahma bull on Angus cows. His idea was that the off-spring would be tough and not need a lot of care. The man had stretched two strands of barbed wire around the whole 150 acres and brought in a huge Brahma bull and thirty Angus cows. After the bull and cows arrived, the man came to the store and told Mr. Dudley to warn everyone that that bull was mean and dangerous if you riled him up, but fine if you left him alone. Within two days half the village had trudged up the lane to the Corn House to try to catch a glimpse of the bull. Those who did brought back a description of an animal you might see in a zoo. His hump was
said to stick up three feet over his back. He had little mean eyes. And thick horns. And so on.

This was, of course, enough for Charlie, who hadn’t set foot on the place since the day of the funeral. He didn’t take the pony. Instead, he took the chestnut ex-army horse a friend had given the Lewises with the vague idea that Mr. Lewis might like to ride. The pony and the horse stayed in the pasture behind the barn at Pine Hill and sometimes they would go a whole week seeing nobody. The problem with the army horse was that you had to be very careful with the reins, because if that horse got the bit in his teeth you had just as well pull on a telephone pole as try to stop him. He would jump anything.

The afternoon after he heard about the bull, Charlie caught the army horse, rode across the railroad track down the hill, crossed the highway, and passed the store just as Mr. Dudley came out to lower the flag.

“Going back to ride around your old place, are you, Charlie?” he asked.

“Yes sir,” Charlie replied. “I want to take a look at that bull.”

“Better be careful. You’ve heard about him, haven’t you?”

“Yes sir, I’ll be careful.”

Later Mr. Dudley said that he had wondered about the wisdom of that trip. He knew all about the army horse’s habits. But Charlie was fourteen and had been riding around alone since he was eight, so Mr. Dudley thought no more about it.

Five o’clock came and people began pulling into the store on the way home. Matthew and Robert were inside getting a Pepsi when Mr. Dudley let out a holler and everyone rushed to the door to see the army horse running wide open on the way home without Charlie. The horse was whinnying in the hysterical way horses do when they think they’re lost because they don’t have a rider and the reins are flapping and the stirrups are banging on their sides. By a miracle the horse made it across the highway without being hit by a car or truck. Mr. Dudley told Matthew and Robert about Charlie going to see the bull, and they were out the door on the way to the Corn House before he stopped talking.

They found him in the middle of the road at its intersection with the lane to the Corn House. He was half awake, leaning on his hands, but sitting up. Blood was running down his face from a scalp wound. He looked up at Matthew and smiled.

“Hi.”

Matthew was so furious he told us that he thought he would explode. He just couldn’t believe that Charlie had done one of his things again. Or that there were any of his things left to do. Matthew used little profanity in his life, but if a count had been kept, a significant part of it would have to be given over to Charlie.

“Charlie, what in the name of God have you done to yourself this time!” Matthew’s words came out in a torrent. There was fear, too. What if the kid had fractured
his skull?

Robert was chuckling. “Better move him off the road, Matthew, before someone come along and runs us all over.”

So they picked him up and put him in the backseat of Matthew’s ’36 Ford sedan on some feed sacks. They stopped at the store to tell Mr. Dudley they had found Charlie and that he would probably be all right.

Gretchen arrived at home to see Matthew’s car in the back driveway. She had a sudden premonition and rushed into the house to find Charlie on the couch in the living room on a feed sack to keep from ruining the slipcover. He had stopped bleeding and was wide awake and telling his story. Gretchen didn’t interrupt. She stood in the door and listened. But her face was stark white. The boy was a mess. With blood all over his front from the scalp wound.

Charlie, as was his habit, told the story with his old urgency to Matthew—not his mother. “I opened the gap the man made behind our barn. It was two boards tied to steel posts with bale string. I tied them back pretty low so if I needed to get out of there in a hurry, I wouldn’t have any trouble jumping it. I found the herd right at the top of the hill. Matthew, you would-n’t believe that bull …”

Here Matthew looked as if he were going to interrupt, but seemed to think better of it, and Charlie continued.

“He looks twice as big as one of the cows. And he has tiny eyes. He looked up at me and didn’t move.
Like he was expecting me, or something. Then he did that moaning they do and pulled some dirt back with a front foot and flipped it over his back. I tell you that bull scared me.”

Gretchen broke in, “At least you had that much sense!” which was so unusual that Charlie and the two men glanced at her. She was completely cool.

“Well anyway, the horse snorted, and I thought I’d better get out of there right then. But I didn’t gallop, I trotted back toward the gap so the damn horse wouldn’t get away from me. Well, anyway, as soon as I turned the horse, the bull came after me. And by the time we got to the gap, that bull was serious—Matthew, he is huge! So I jumped the gap and looked back over my shoulder to be sure the bull didn’t jump, too. Well, he didn’t, but while I was looking back, the horse got the bit and was gone. I mean, he ran
away
with me. There wasn’t anything I could do except bail out, and I was scared to do that. So when he got to the hard road I was still with him. He turned sharp left, his feet went out from under him, and down we went. And smacked my head on the road. I guess it knocked me out. The next thing I remember is you and Robert and feeling the blood running down my face—”

That was enough for Gretchen. Matthew said he had never seen her so angry—and flushed now, where she had been pale before. “Go out and get in the car, Charlie. And take that feed sack with you so you don’t bleed all over the seats.”

There was no question about her tone of voice.
Charlie went.

“Will you take care of the horse, Matthew? Just catch him and get the tack off and turn him out. I’ll worry about him later.”

So off they went to the emergency room. Charlie had a concussion and would have to stay in bed for two days, but the wound was just a scalp wound. The doctor said it was amazing that Charlie could remember what had happened considering the blow to the head he got. We laughed when we heard that idea, because Charlie would have kept that story in his head come hell or high water—just so he could tell it to Matthew and upset his mother.

Still, even after he recovered from his bull adventure, he looked pretty grim. A little like after the mule died. Or just after the funeral. Like he was grieving. We didn’t know how he acted at school, but around the village, he just looked sad.

Fall passed, and in January there was a hard freeze, the time of wood smoke, and crows calling in the distance. And in spite of Billy’s forebodings, hog killing went on. There were lots of hogs. On the appointed Monday, the steam rose again from the scalding tub, Billy did his dance, and the lights and windpipes were thrown across the wires as always. Monday and Tuesday morning Charlie saw the steam rising. He got on the bus as usual. Tuesday evening, just as it was getting dark, he went to the store for Gretchen. The men had finished for the day and were
sitting on stump ends around a fire they had built. They were in a close circle around the fire. Charlie slipped into the circle without a sound and sat down next to Matthew. There was a jug going around and it had stopped with Robert who took a long pull just as Charlie arrived. Then Robert hunched forward as if to ward off the cold, the jug dangling in one hand between his legs, head down.

No one said a word. Then, without lifting his head, he swung it to his left to look at Charlie. The way he swung his head you could tell he was drunk. And suddenly he was off the stump and slumped in front of Charlie, leaning on his arms. His face got closer and closer, until Charlie must have felt the heat of his breath and smelled the whiskey. The circle froze, everyone staring, waiting to see what Robert would do, knowing that the time had finally come. Charlie tried to look toward Matthew, but he was somehow unable to pull his eyes away from Robert, whose face in shadow was featureless and menacing. It was as if everyone had stopped breathing—waiting. Then right into Charlie’s face, but speaking to Matthew, he said, “I done told you for years not to let the little white son of a bitch come around us. But you never would listen … Well, it don’t matter now. He’s gone. He just done growed out of us. Another year we won’t see him no more … He may be sitting here now, but he gone sure enough. Gone at last. At last!” He laughed his choppy
laugh and raised his left arm.

Matthew’s huge hand shot out and gripped the skinny arm. In his quiet voice, he said, “No more, Robert. You done said enough.”

And for an instant, silence. And then Robert wob-bled once and slumped forward right into Charlie’s lap. Charlie jumped up, horror on his face, leaving Robert passed out on the ground. Then he turned and started toward the store.

“Charlie!” called Matthew. “Charlie!”

But the boy kept walking. In the iron January night, with a breeze springing up from the north, maybe bringing snow—too cold for hounds to run tonight— walking back toward the store, away from hog killing and the branch where he had been baptized. Walking up the hill, the other way, across the railroad.

And Matthew didn’t call again.

I have no memory of why I was in the creek behind our barn that Sunday morning, barefoot. I guess I just found myself there. I do know about the barefoot part, though. I didn’t wear shoes during the summer, except to church, or at least I didn’t until I was fourteen and we had left the Corn House and the farm for good. I was twelve that Sunday morning and it was May. School would be out soon and summer starting, everything blooming, everything alive and chirping, or cooing or buzzing. Even the pony, looking over the fence at me, dozing in the late spring warmth, shone gray and fat after the winter’s red mud and short grass.

So I was in the creek barefoot when I stepped on him. I say “him.” I don’t know which sex, really. But there was one damn sure thing—that snake was not
an “it.” He was three circles buried in the mud and water grass of the pool. He was still thin from the long winter. His backbone protruded above his body, and the skin was loose and moving as I pulled my foot away when the circles stirred under my weight—the way a snake does when you step on him. Not in fear exactly. I was startled. That’s all.

I grabbed hold of a willow branch and pulled myself out of the creek and, glancing over my shoulder, went through the back door of the barn. There was an old rusty bucket hanging on the wall with the pitchfork next to it. Finding him a second time turned out to be a job. Finally I just waded around some more until I stepped on him again. Then I carefully slid the fork under the water to pick him up. He came up out of the water ready to travel, flowing over the tines like quicksilver, insubstantial, but there nonetheless. But not for long unless I did something quick. Just as he was about to drop off the fork, I had the bucket ready and in he went. He didn’t try to escape; he coiled up again, making his circles in the bottom of the bucket as I watched. He looked just like any other snake to me. Not black, but almost black. No rattlesnake or copperhead markings. Just an almost-black snake. I hadn’t been taught about pit vipers and diamond-shaped heads. It had just never come up.