Old Man Harlan’s face soured over.
“Moses! Thank God,” Granny said. “Strode’s about gone!”
Moses dropped the ladder and went up on the porch. He put one hand on Granpaw’s forehead and with the other took out from his pocket something looked like a little skull, bone white with eye sockets and fangs. A swishing, hissing sound came from inside. Moses kept his hand on Granpaw’s head. He shook the little skull, making the swishing sound all up and down Granpaw’s body. Nobody said a word. Momma’s eyes followed the movements of Moses’ hand, the movements of the swishing white skull. After what seemed a long while Granpaw’s breathing started to calm down.
“Thank you Jesus,” Granny said.
“Lord A Mighty!” Old Man Harlan whispered.
Bird had lost interest. “Dark meat,” she said, touching Willis’s arm. “I will like me some of that.”
Willis backed away.
It took them all four to get Granpaw up, get him to the station wagon. Granny and Momma carried him by his arms.
Moses and Old Man Harlan carried him by his feet. I carried his hat.
They got Granpaw in the back seat and Granny got in with him. She got Granpaw’s head in her lap. Old Man Harlan spied the groceries in the back seat and told Granny.
“They’ll keep,” Granny yelled. “Drive this thing! Drive it fast!”
A hateful look came up in Old Man Harlan’s eyes. “Been driving pert near all my life, Mattie. Don’t need no dirt farmer’s wife telling me how!” He started for the driver’s side door but Moses beat him to it. Willis crawled in on the passenger side.
Moses started the station wagon, slammed it backwards and out into the road. Granny hollered out the window. “They’s biscuits and ham-gravy in the refrigerator Ruby!” Before Momma could answer, Moses changed gears and the station wagon roared off, dust and gravel blowing out the back end.
“Old Gooseberry!” Bird cackled.
“You got that right,” said Old Man Harlan. “In the flesh.”
20
Go Through the World
Willis and me were out on the porch steps at his house, eating ‘maters and baloney on white bread Miss Alma had made.
“Yo s-step pappy do dat to yo mammy?” Willis said.
I nodded that he did. “He got in with some men. In Florida. Bad men, Willis. Crooks. He broke Missy’s arm. Momma caught him rubbing on her.”
Willis brushed a fly off the end of his sandwich. “What you talking ‘bout?”
“You know. There,” I said, pointing between Willis’s legs. “Her privates.”
Willis opened his eyes wide. “Yo mammy tell you dat?”
“No, but I heard her talking to Granny. He was supposed to be giving her a bath. But Momma walked in.”
Missy hadn’t said a word since her and Momma came back, just laid on the couch, thumb inside her mouth, staring at nothing in particular. She wore a cast with a sling down the front like a sail. Four little purple fingers and a thumb curled out the end.
“Victor said he wasn’t doing anything. Momma didn’t believe him. She tried to pull Missy away, and that’s how her arm got broke. Victor beat Momma with his fists.”
“Call da police?”
“Don’t know. It was bad though. Like what happened to Granpaw.”
Granpaw’d been in the hospital three days. Me and Granny and Momma and Missy all went to see him there, all the way up to Glascow. The room they had him in smelled like pee.
“Granny got Miss Alma to help out around the house,” I said.
“I know,” Willis said.
“She had to get somebody to take care of the tobacco too.”
“‘L’ brothas,” Willis said. “From church. MMMiss Alma. She tell me.” He took another bite off his sandwich. Granny had hired the ‘L’ brothers — Lester, Luke and Lionel — tall colored boys with muscles and scarves and long handled hoes and jugs of water. She was going to pay them from her and Granpaw’s crop money. She figured out she could pay off Old Man Harlan and still have enough they could make it through the winter even with Granpaw being sick. She was sure of it. People from Kingdom Town would help.
Old Man Harlan didn’t like the idea. “Ya’ll can’t run a farm this way. Why don’t ya’ll move into town and let me handle things? I’ll loan you the money.”
“Yeah and what about the tobacco crop?” Granny said.
“I’ll take care of that. Give you your share when I get mine.”
“You crazier’n you look, you think I’d do that,” Granny said.
Old Man Harlan’s face soured over. “Bad enough you going t’at nigger church. You got to hire out the congregation too?”
“That don’t concern you,” Granny said.
A red grin opened one corner of Old Man Harlan’s mouth.
“Reckon they’s niggers in heaven, Mattie?”
“I don’t have to listen to this.” Granny turned to go back in the house.
“Or you reckon niggers got they own heaven?”
A mangy brown dog laid out next to the porch where we were eating. I threw it a piece of sandwich. “Let’s go see Moses.”
“Mo not say,” Willis said. “He got to sssay first.”
“He isn’t ever going to say. I been down here all this time he hasn’t.”
Willis took another bite off his sandwich. “Ca-cain’t go dare ‘less he say. Dey mmmagic in dem wood. Snake.”
“I ain’t scared of no magic,” I said.
“Make you crazy, boy. Dem wood will.”
“Don’t call me ‘boy’,” I said. “We can run away, can’t we? If we get in trouble we can.”
“Na uh,” Willis said.
“Moses might could help me, Willis. I had a dream about Moses.” I told Willis the dream I had when we were playing the ‘pass out’ game, about the fire pouring on Daddy, about Moses. I threw another piece of sandwich to the dog. “I think he did it Willis. I think Victor killed Daddy.”
Willis looked at the ground.
After while I said, “You reckon if Moses was to fight Victor he’d win? I bet he could knock Victor’s block off!”
Willis took another bite off his sandwich. He closed his eyes and chewed. Then he looked at me. “We go, you ca-cain’t tell Miss Mattie. Yo Mammy neither.”
“I won’t,” I said. “Cross my heart.”
“Cross my heart don’t mean shit,” Willis said.
I was cocky then. Now, with the wind blowing through the poplars and the sun playing peek-a-boo, I wasn’t so sure. I kept looking on the ground all around Chester, checking to see if there were any snakes under the gooseberry bushes. Granny’s butcher knife blade was fixed inside my belt. I had wrapped it in newspaper and put it in an old sock. Every now and then I’d feel of the handle to make sure it was there.
Chester stopped short of a big tree root. One of his ears went around to the front. The other stayed.
“Come up dare, Chestah!” Willis yelled. Chester backed off instead. “Come up! Come up!” Willis yelled. Chester went ahead, stopped, then stepped over the tree root and out onto an old roadbed that was partially hidden under wild bluegrass and dandelions and white dandelion-puffballs.
“Use be da train run here,” Willis said.
I could see what was left of the railroad tracks under the grass. They ran in both directions over the bulge of the hill. On the other side of the tracks dark green trees — Christmas trees, they looked like — crowded against one another, making a wall that ended at the side of a giant fist of rock. The rock shot straight up out of the ground and was covered in thick vines. The hill we’d been climbing continued up behind it, hidden under a bumpy green carpet of Christmas trees. White pine, Willis said they were, bald cypress and cedar too.