When he finished the song, he looked at me. “Hold deze.” He gave me the eggs and turned with his walking stick toward the door. I went with him; still under the spell of his singing. The eggs felt warm and good on my arms. I walked all the way back to the house that way; still making sure to keep a little distance between him and me.
“Where did you learn to do that?” I asked.
“What you mean?”
“With them chickens. Making them be quiet like that. When Granny gets eggs they run all over.”
“Mo teach me,” the boy said.
“Mo?”
“Mo.”
“Didn’t I tell you they was kids down here?” Granny had a big grin on her face, standing in the doorway with the screen pushed open.
The colored boy and me came up the steps, and I gave Granny the eggs.
“That’s Willis, Orbie. That’s his name.”
Willis grinned with all his teeth.
“You better get on home,” Granny said to Willis. “It’ll be dark soon.”
“Yessum,” Willis said.
Granny and me followed him around to the front of the house where his mule was tied. The mule’s name was Chester. He was old with a curvy back and no saddle, a piece of metal in his mouth with a rope on each side. Granny got one of her chairs and put it next to the mule. Willis climbed up, grabbed the hair on the mule’s neck and pulled himself to where he could hike his potato foot over. Granny handed him his walking stick. He sat up there and grinned.
Granny and me watched him ride off.
Later on I said, “He sung a song Granny. He made all them chickens just be quiet.”
Granny looked at me and smiled. She was busy fixing up ham and biscuits for supper. “He might come over again sometime.” I watched her mix white flour and ham grease in a pan. “You don’t have to play with him though. Not if you don’t want to.”
Next day I was out on the front porch, drawing airplanes dive bombing a battleship. I made the sky full of smoke and some of the airplanes on fire. There was a submarine too. I was just about to explode the ship with a torpedo when I heard something sounded like water pouring out by the well. What it was, was Chester, Willis’s mule, peeing a big yellow stream there. Willis sat on top of him, smiling, a red scarf tied over his head.
“Go away!” I shouted.
He didn’t move or anything, just sat up there on that mule, smiling.
“I don’t have to play with you!” I said.
He watched me a minute more, then turned the mule around and rode off.
The next day it happened again. I was out there drawing, and there he was by the well again, sitting on Chester. I hadn’t heard him come up or anything. It kind of spooked me, but then I remembered myself and pretended he wasn’t there. Without looking at him, I got up and went in the house. I sat in there in the front room on Granny’s couch, pretending to be busy with my drawing. When I went back outside, he was gone.
13
The Postcard
“You ain’t young no more,” Granny said.
“That’s a fine thing to say and us with Nealy to pay.” Granpaw sat in one of the cane chairs on the front porch, his forearms resting on his thighs.
I was looking at a Superman comic book, at a picture of Superman who was lying down, dying from being next to Kryptonite. Kryptonite was green rocks from the planet Krypton — the only thing that could kill Superman.
“If you was to drop dead he sure wouldn’t get paid,” Granny said. “Then where would I be?”
“Ain’t nobody dropped dead yet,” Granpaw said.
“You already had one stroke,” Granny said. “You was to ask me, you about to have another.”
Granpaw spat. “See now, that there’s the thing of it Mattie. Nobody asked you.”
Granny sat on the other side of the door away from Granpaw. She’d stretched a pillowcase over a silver hoop and was pushing a needle trailing pink thread up from the bottom. “It would be good if you was to rest a little.”
Right then a man with stick legs rode up in the yard on a skinny black bicycle. The front wheel bumped over a rock. The man had to jerk the handlebars this way and that to keep from falling.
“Morning Cecil!” Granny said.
“Mrs. Wood.” Cecil got off the bicycle, put down the kickstand and went around the front to a scuffed leather bag that made a belly over the handlebars. He wore a black ball cap, the bill turned backward so that the back of his neck was under shade. He fished around inside the leather bag and brought out a handful of letters.
“I plumb forgot you was coming,” Granny said.
Cecil made a face and walked over to the porch, nodded to Granpaw. His voice came out deep as a bullfrog’s. “Mr. Wood.”
“Cecil,” Granpaw said.
“It’s Friday Mrs. Wood. I always come on Friday.” Cecil handed the letters to Granny.
“You skinny as a rail Cecil,” Granny said. “Stay to lunch, and I’ll fatten you up.”
Cecil grinned a mouthful of crooked teeth. One had broken off slantwise. “I best be getting on. Thank you.” He stepped back away from the porch and looked up at the sky. His bullfrog voice could well have belonged to a man twice his size.
“You reckon there’s rain in them clouds Mr. Wood?”
“No. I don’t reckon there is,” Granpaw said.
Cecil took out a handkerchief and wiped his face. His adam’s apple had a way of going up the length of his throat, making a u-turn up there and dropping back down. “Shore is hot.”
“Shore is,” Granpaw said.
Granny looked up from the letters. “Orbie, go get Cecil a cold drink of water.”
“No, now Mrs. Wood,” Cecil said, “I got to get on with the mail. Much obliged though.”
“Well,” Granny said. “You welcome.”
Cecil wiped his face. He kicked the kickstand away and pushed off. “Ya’ll take care now.” The front wheel jerked side to side till he got it straight. Then he rode off.
Granpaw looked in the sky at the clouds; heaps of them piled everywhere. “No. I don’t reckon there’s any rain in them clouds.” He stood, took off his hat and slapped the brim against his pant leg. “Reckon I will lay down a spell, Mattie.”
Granny was looking through her letters. “Go on then. Rest.”
“What ya’ll reading there son?” Granpaw asked me.
“Superman,” I said.
“Superman? What’s that?”
“A man, Granpaw. He’s made out of steel. Nothing can kill him except Kryptonite.”
“Crib Night?”
“Kryptonite Granpaw. It makes Superman weak.”
“I never heard of such a thing.” Granpaw’s face looked tired. “Must be some of that Crib Night around here the way I feel. You reckon there is?”
“I don’t know Granpaw.”
Granpaw laughed. The laugh turned into a cough. Granpaw pulled the screen door open and went inside. I went back reading my comic book. Superman was almost dead. Big drops of sweat were popping out all over his forehead.
Granny knocked the letters and all her sewing off on the floor. “Looky here, Orbie! It’s a postcard from Ruby!”
I beat the rain barrel with a stick. Then I beat a place under the window. Pieces of paint flew off. I was mad. Mad at Momma. Mad at the postcard she sent. I went around the back of the house. Moses had scraped most of the old paint off there. I sat down on a rock and poked the ground with the pointy end of the stick. On the front of Momma’s card had been a picture of a pink flamingo-bird. It was dated June 18th. That was Tuesday, almost a week ago. Now it was Monday.