Granpaw looked at the road. “It’s just something people say from time to time, like some folks will say ‘by God’.”
“‘Grabs’ ain’t like ‘God’ Granpaw. You could be by ‘God’, but I don’t see how you could be by ‘grabs’. What’s that mean?”
“Boy, you shore got you some questions!” Granpaw laughed. “I don’t know. Grabs is grabs is all. It’s just what it is.” After while he said, “I bet this old Buick’s got more rattles than that Ford of Victor’s.”
“It’s Momma’s Ford!” I almost shouted. “It doesn’t belong to Victor!”
“All right, all right,” Granpaw said. “How come you so contrary today?”
“I ain’t contrary.”
“Yes you are. Everything I’ve mentioned you’ve had to fuss about. You ain’t mad at me are you?”
“No Granpaw.”
Granpaw drove on down the road and up a hill. At the top was a barn, its big red doors almost on the road. We passed it and went down around a curve and then over a bridge. Below the bridge a skin-and-bones mule was drinking from a half dried out mud hole, the few hairs left in its tail flicking about like a wrecked broom. The smell was awful.
“That down there’s Kingdom Creek,” Granpaw said. “What they is of it, this far up.”
The sun made a star in the chrome next to the window.
It turned itself into a smoky blue ball. I closed my eyes and there it came again, a blue ball of smoky light floating behind my eyelids.
“You all right over there, Mr. Baseball Cap?”
“Yeah,” I said.
Granpaw reached over and pulled the bill of my ball cap down. I laughed and pushed it back up. “That hat’s bigger’n you are.”
“Is not!”
“It is too,” Granpaw laughed. “It’s a wonder it stays on at all.”
“Granny fixed it,” I said. “She put a piece of quilt inside.” I took it off and held it over for him to see. Pieces of red quilt showed out from the inside. So did the letters ‘J C’.
“What’s them letters stand for? Jesus?”
“Jim Conlin. He’s the one give me this hat. He’s a gas station man, Granpaw.” I turned the hat to where he could see the red winged horse and the words that said, Mobilgas. The horse stood out like a champ.
Granpaw smiled. “That’s a real one ain’t it?”
“Uh huh.” I popped it back on; proud that Granpaw liked it, even if it was too big. It was strange how I’d got it back, that fat boy throwing it in the water, the blue light and the lightning, that tree branch crashing down.
Granpaw took out his leather pouch, undid the string and skinned back the leather. A black twist of tobacco poked out. He bit off a piece, moved it around inside his mouth, and then let it go back to the back of his jaw.
I looked over the seat at the back of the station wagon. A stack of boards rattled back there with a can of white paint and some brushes. Next to all that leaned three big bags full of groceries.
“Can I open them Sugar Puffs, Granpaw?”
“You just had a hamburger. At Grinestaff’s.”
“Yeah, but I need me something sweet.”
“No now. Mattie will pitch a fit.”
“I don’t like Grinestaff.”
“How come?”
“He called me a City Slicker.”
“Well you are, ain’t you?” Granpaw laughed. “Would you rather he said you was a hillbilly?”
“No. I don’t know. Maybe. What you gonna do with all them boards?”
“Make signs. Crosses, you know. Put them up and down the road. It’s the Lord’s work.”
“If it’s His work how come you have to do it?” I remembered signs in Indiana — on the way down from Detroit — signs on the side of the road. White crosses with Bible words. John 3:16. Jesus Saves! Prepare to Meet GOD.
“You can help me if you’ve a mind to,” Granpaw said.
“I don’t have one, Granpaw. I don’t like Jesus anyway. I’m a witch. Witch’s don’t need Jesus.”
Granpaw spit tobacco juice out the window and wiped his chin. “Where’d you hear that at?”
“Circle Stump Boys. I made a light come around a tree, Granpaw. I scared all’em Circle Stump Boys away. They said I was a witch.”
“A light?”
“Yeah Granpaw, like lightning. It came around a tree. Lightning knocked a branch off. That’s how I got my hat back. It was magic, Granpaw. Victor took my hat away and magic brought it back.”
“Well,” Granpaw said. “It don’t matter what a person can or can’t do. Who’d you think protected you when you handled that snake?”
“Moses. He’s a witch too.”
Granpaw spit more tobacco juice. “The Lord protected you. Not Moses.”
“You believe in magic Granpaw?”
“Not like you do, I don’t.”
“I mean like when a magician cuts a woman in half and she’s still alive? Or when she floats?”
“Floats?”
“Yeah, Granpaw! When she floats in the air and the magician shows you with his hoop!”
“That’s just thinking something is when it ain’t,” Granpaw said. “They’s a power inside things though. Like in that snake you handled. I believe in that. Remember how you felt?”
“I felt good,” I said. “I felt tall.” Right then a bug left a yellow splatter up the dirty windshield.
“I know you did. I could feel you feeling it. That’s a natural thing. Like when the sun comes up of a morning. Or when a cloud changes shape.”
“Or like lightning!” I said.
“The power of God, that was,” Granpaw said. “Power of God’s like a dream. You’ll think it’s real enough but then when you try to grab hold on it, won’t be nothing to grab. It’s there and not there at the same time.”
“I had a dream, Granpaw. Moses came inside it.” I told Granpaw about Daddy on the ingot with the fire coming down. About the tiger in the cage and the cigar I thought was Victor’s.
Granpaw slowed the car a little. “You say it was Moses that come?”
“Uh huh. He came after. Black Jack didn’t kill Daddy, Granpaw. Not in my dream. It was Victor.”
“Lord God,” Granpaw said. “What all will you come up with next?”
“Were you going to stab Victor that time?”
“Stab him?”
“With your knife that time. When you and him was arguin’? You hate Victor, don’t you? I do.”
Granpaw shook his head. “I don’t hate Victor.”
“You hate Mr. Harlan,” I said.
“No I don’t. I hate the way he does. There’s a difference.”
I couldn’t see it. To me if a person did things you hated, you would have to hate them too. It didn’t make any sense otherwise. We went past Moses’ place and over the next hill. I could see the black skull of Granpaw’s barn.
“Do you see what I see?” Granpaw said.
“No.”
“Up to the house there. Looks to me like a car.”
“I don’t see it.”
“By the well there. Look!”
My heart leaped up. “Momma’s back!”
Granpaw laughed. “I knowed you was sharper-eyed than that!”
We came down to where the house was and turned in. The black Ford was parked next to the well. Right away, I got a scared feeling. I could see Missy’s doll baby twisted up in the back window, naked, one of its arms missing. One glassy blue eye stared out zombie-like across the road. I pushed open the door and jumped out.
“Wait a minute here,” Granpaw called, but I was already half way to the front porch.
I could hear blubbering sounds way back in the kitchen. I pushed through the screen door into the front room, ran part way across the crackly linoleum and stopped. There was a smell of perfume and cigarette smoke. From the kitchen I heard Granny say, “They Lord honey, that’s awful.”