! Yumpity yay! I
got oats in my head! Git outta my way! Git outta my way!" I made a hard run
around the kitchen.
"You crazy little monkey. Go ahead, have a good time. Just go ahead and
tear this old house down. You're my littlest baby. You're going out and stay
a long, long time with your grandma, and I won't have no little boy to drive
me crazy! Have a good time. Let's see you! Run! Holler! Loud! I'm gonna
gitcha! Gonna gitcha! Run!"
We chased all around over the front room and back through the kitchen.
She grabbed me up off the floor and swung me around and around till my feet
stuck straight out. She was laughing and I felt hot tears salty on the side
of her face. When she let me down on the floor, she knelt down on her knees
and held me up real warm, and I said, "Mama, I'll tell ya. I like ta have ya
chase me. Play. Stuff like that. Talk ta each other. Hug on each other. But
I don't like fer ya ta call me secha little boy all th' time."
"Oh, I thought so. I was looking for you to say that most any day now,"
she told me, holding me off at arm's length and looking me up and down.
"You're getting to be a mighty awful big man."
"Bigger'n I usta wuz?"
"Bigger than you used to be."
"Usta wuz. Cain't stay still."
"I know," Mama said to me, and she set down on the floor and pulled me
down in her lap, "You grow."
"Up."
"Up this way. Out this way. Across this way."
"Big."
"You can't stay still," she went on.
"Gotta hurry. Grow."
"Tell me, mister grower, this. Now, when you was just a little boy with
curly hair a little over four years old, you said to me that you never would
get mad and stay mad at me anymore. Will you still say that while you're
growing up so big so fast?"
"Fast as I grow a little, I'll tell you it again."
"You promise? You cross your heart and hope to die?"
"Cross. Double cross."
"Fine. Now look right out through that window there and tell me what
you see coming down the road?"
"Gra-mma"
"Grandma's right!"
"Hey! Hey! Gramma! Gramma!"
I snorted out the front door running to meet the buggy, waving my hands
about my head like I was signaling a battleship. When I got about halfway
down the hill, I struck my big toe against a sharp rock, and it tumbled me
so bad the tears started down my cheeks; but I started running that much
faster, for my only chance to get a free ride was to catch the buggy while
she was on the level, because once she got headed up the steep hill to our
house she wouldn't stop to pick me up.
I had tears on my face and dirt on the tears when I got to the road,
but I was there ahead of the buggy. I jumped up and down at the side of the
road and I made all kinds of signals with my hands, but Grandma just kept
looking straight ahead. I yelled, "Gramma! Hey! Gramma!" But she didn't even
as much as glance over my way.
I trotted along a ragweed ditch full of fine washed sand, and kept
hollering, "It's me! Hey! It's me! Gramma! Me!" And she just kept old White
Tom and Red Bess trotting right along, throwing more dust, straw, and chalky
manure dirt back in my face.
About six foot this side of where the level road took off up the hill
toward our house, the buggy stopped, and I made one long, sailing jump, in
between the wheels, and up into the seat beside Grandma, and she was
bouncing the whole buggy up and down laughing and saying, "Why, was that
you? Back yonder? I saw a little old dirty-faced boy standing back there,
and I says to myself, "No, that's not Woody, not my Woodsaw.'"
Sweat was in little bumps on Grandma's face, because she was so hot and
her whole face was bouncing with the buggy because she was so fat. A black
hat with some flowers on top and a big pin that always made me wonder if it
wasn't sticking right on through her hair and head from one ear to the
other. Gray hair commencing to make a stand that had come from hoeing' and
working a crop of worries for about fifty years.
"I was clean when I seen ya comin'. Then I started a runnin', an'
stumped my big toe on an Ïl' rock. Hurt. Real bad. Gimme th'
lines."
She put one arm around me and handed me the long leather reins, and
told me, "Yes, you look like my little grandson now. I can tell by the shape
of your head that's my Woodchuck."
I stood up on the floorboards and held both of the big reins in one
hand. It was more than a handful, but I managed to wave at Mama. "Hi! Hi! I
got 'em! I got 'em! Hi! Lookit me! See me drive?"
I jumped out of the buggy in front of our house and Grandma met me
coming around the horses. She put both of her hands on her hips and
straightened her corsets up a little and smiled at me, and said, "Well, you
are a smart feller. Already know how to tie a slipknot on a buggy wheel."
I spent the next few minutes looking at the knot I'd tied on the buggy
spoke, tracing the reins up over the horses' backs, and up to the bits in
their mouths. I handled the loose bit and the steel shined in the sun. When
I rubbed Tom's bald spot between his eyes, Bess looked over at me kind of
lonesome like, so I rubbed her, too. I walked around and around the buggy,
and it smelled like strong paint and hot leather. At the back were seven or
eight gallon buckets, all full of milk and cream and clabber to take around
to folks in town.
I could hear Mama and Grandma talking through the kitchen window.
Grandma was saying, "You're not looking any too good, Nora. You're
working too hard. Straining yourself. Something. I don't know. What is it?"
"Why, I feel all right; do I look bad? Just everyday housework. Nothing
else."
"Something else, too, young lady. Something else. This old house.
That's what it is. This old house is so old and rotten and so awful hard to
keep clean."
Grandma was leaning back in a big wide chair that just about fit her,
sizing Mama up and down. A few gray hairs had got loose from her hairpins,
and she was pressing them back with her hands, and pinning them down where
they belonged.
"We're about to get all straight again," Mama said.
"Here. Something's wrong around here. Tell me the truth before I go. I
just got to know."
Mama rubbed her hair back out of her eyes and said, "I feel good, I
feel good all over. I work hard and feel good, but I don't know. Just seems
like right in through my head some way or another, something. Little dizzy
spells."
"I thought so," Grandma told her, "I thought so. I could tell. You
can't fool an old fooler, you know. Might fool your own self a little. But
not me. Not your old Mama. If it was one of your own kids sick, you'd be
able to tell it a mile away. I'm the same way about my flock of kids. I know
when one of them is out of kilter. I put diapers on you and I washed your
ears a million times and I sent you off to school in dresses we made
together, and if you just so much as blink one eye crossways, I can tell it.
You promise to get the doctor down here and let him look you over!"
"Milk will sour in the buggy."
"Oh, to the dickens with milk and butter, Nora! I'm talking sense.
Promise me you'll get the doctor down. Have him come down every few days for
a while. He can keep up with you, and do you some good."
"Your eggs will hatch out. Well, all right, all right. I'll get the
doctor. Here, kiss me good-bye." Mama kissed Grandma on the forehead.
Grandma crawled back into the buggy seat and found me perched up beside
her. "What about this young jaybird going home with me? Is it all right with
you? Will you miss his hard-working hands around the place here?"
Mama was standing in the yard waving. "I will! 'Bye! I'll tell Papa
you're gone. He'll miss you!"
The team knocked dust up between their legs and it was good because the
little biting flies couldn't bother their ankles. Grandma was letting me
hold the reins.
She told me, "Stop here a minute or two." I pulled the team to a stop.
"Get three pounds of butter out of the back and take it up to Mrs. Tatum's
door. Get the money. Don't squeeze the butter too hard, it'll have your
finger marks on it."
I knocked on the door and handed a lady three pounds of butter and got
a dollar bill and a twenty-five-cent piece in the palm of my hand. It felt
like some kind of magic sheet of paper and a magic piece of silver. I handed
it up to Grandma and she yelled, "Thank you, Mrs. Tatum! Mighty fine
weather! Thank you!'' And Mrs. Tatum yelled back, "I can just smell a blue
norther on top of these pretty days!"
We drifted on down the road a few more blocks, passing a lot of
scattered houses, and I held the reins again, being awful careful to hold
them up plenty high in the air so the people all along the road could see I
was ramrodding this driving business. Grandma just sort of smiled and said,
"Turn here to your right. Which a way's my right? North. Cold up there.
Hurry and make your turn. Stop over there in front of that little white
house. Get out and take Mrs. Warner three pounds of butter. Then come back
and take three buckets of milk. That family of hers is getting bigger and
hungrier all of the time. I don't think her boy is working anymore down at
the gin."
"Howdy do," I said to Mrs. Warner, and she said, "Why, Mrs, Tanner's
got a mighty good little boy working for her now. Isn't three big heavy
pounds of butter a little too heavy for you?"
"Nope." I ran back to the buggy and piled in again.
"Now, do you see that little old broke-down shack over there in under
that black walnut tree?"
"Yeah, I see it. Say, Gramma, why didn't Mrs. Warner gimme no dollar
an' no quarter? I see th' shack."
"Mrs. Warner does a charge account with me. Sews. Fixes clothes for my
whole family. Now this next lady's name is Mrs. Walters. Take two pounds of
butter to her. Then come back and take three buckets of milk."
I walked up to the little shack and tried to keep my feet on a rotten
plank that was used as a boardwalk. It was too rickety and caused me to lose
my balance. I stumbled and dropped one of the pound squares of butter and I
felt like one of Oklahoma's worst outlaws when I saw the wet cloth unroll,
and the butter roll out across the ground, picking up little dark rocks and
a solid coat of hard dust. I was standing there with tears in my eyes, and
more coming all of the time, when I heard somebody talking in my ear.
"I was watchin' you frum th' kitchen window. My, my. What a nice little
boy yo' gran'ma's got to go 'roun' an' carry her buttah an' milk.
I oughtta knowed you couldn' make it ovah that Ïl' trippy boardwalk. Lordy,
me! Jes' lookit that nice big yeller poun' Ï buttah all layin' theah in my
ol' dirty, filthy yard! Oh, well don' you git no gray head 'bout it, little
'livery man. I can use it all right. See heah? I can jes' scrape, scrape,
scrape, an' then they won' be too much wasted."
I finally got up strength enough to mumble out, "Stumped my toe agin'."
"Is he all right, Matilda?"
"Sho', sho'! He's all right. Jes' a little toe stump. Shoot a 'possum,
I goes 'roun' heah all barefoot jes' like you do. See my ol bare foot, how
tuff 'tis? Come right on in through th' front room heah, that's right. I bet
you this is th' firs' time you evah wuz in a black niggah's house. Is it?"
"Yes ma'am."
"I don' hafta tell you no mo' than what yo' eyes can already see, do
I?"
"No ma'am."
"You leas'ways sez, yas ma'am an' no ma'am, don' you?"
"Yes'm."
"An' me jes' an ol black niggah. Hmmm. Sho' do soun' good."
"Are you a nigger lady?"
"Whatta I look like, honey?"
"Are you a nigger 'cause you're black?"
"What folks all says."
"What do people call you a nigger for?"
" 'Cause they jes' don' know no bettah. Don' know what 'niggah' means.
Don' know how bad makes ya feel."
"You called your own self that," I told her.
"When I calls my own se'f a niggah, I knows I don' mean it. An' even
anothah niggah calls me a 'niggah,' I don' min', 'cause I knows it's most
jes' fun. But when a white pusson calls me 'niggah,' it's like a whip cuts
through my ol' hide."
"I gotta go bring you in some milk," I told Matilda.
"Did you speak 'milk'?" She got a big smile all over her face.
"My gramma's got you three buckets."
"Some weeks it's buttah. Some weeks eggs. An' now you speaks out
somethin' 'bout milk. Lawd God, little rattlesnakes! C'mon, I'll he'p you."
I went running through the house chasing her and said, "I'm driver 'n
d'livery boy!"
We got back to the buggy and Grandma said, "Did you tell the lady you
were sorry that you dropped her butter?"
I looked down at the dusty road and didn't say anything.
Matilda cut in and said, "Missy Tanner, any little boy that does work
fo' you's jes' mortally gotta be good. You gives me th` buttah an' th' sweet
milk, an' he 'livers it to me. My Ïl' man's a-gonna chomp down on that same
ol' co'nbread, an' 'stead or it a-bein' all so dry an' gritty it
sticks in yo' throat an' cuts through yo' belly, it's a-gonna be all slick
an' greasy with good ol' runnin' buttah. An' it'll go down his oozle
magoozler so slick an' easy it won't have time ta scrape his neck 'er belly
neither one. An' my kids'll git greasy all over an' wipe it off on their
ovahalls, but po' little fellas, I ain't even a-gonna cuss 'em out 'bout it
if they do; 'cause they'll be jes' like me, so hongery fo' buttah on
co'nbread, an' sweet milk, they'll jes' think they's oozin' ovah inta th'
sho' 'nuff promised lan'."
Grandma said, "I try not to ever just clean forget you."
"I knows ya do," Matilda told Grandma.
"I just wish it could be more of it more often," Grandma went on to
say.
"I wishes I could he'p you out mo' an' mo' often, too. You knows that,
don't ya, Missy Tanner?" When she looked in under the back lid of the buggy,
Matilda went on, 'I'll see if I can see any of mah own kids aroun'. Pack in
two of these heah big gallion buckets. Tuckah! Tuckah!''
"Yes'm. Heah I is! Watcha wan'?"
"Undo yo'self, Tuckah Boy, undo yo'self! Come out heah an' see with yo'
own big eyes what all's a-gonna grease dat belly o' yo's! Sweet milk! 'Nuff
ta fatten an' raise fo' hogs ta butchah!"
Tucker flew out from behind a patch of weeds, and then I saw three or
four other little heads shoot out and stand up and look and think and
listen.
Grandma smiled and said, "Hi, Tuck! Still playing in that old patch of
gimpson weeds, I see."
"Howdy do, Miss Tanner."
Matilda handed me a gallon bucket and then she handed Tuck one. Then
she said, "Tuck, this is Mistah Woodpile. Mistah Woodpile, dis heah is my
boy, Tuckah."
I shook hands with Tuck and we said, "Glad ta know ya."
Then he laughed at the top of his voice and grabbed a bucket of milk
between his two hands, bent over it with his face almost touching the top of
the milk, his breath blowing rings out across it, saying, "Good Ïl', good
Ïl', good ol' milk! Good ol', good ol', good ol' milk!"
For the first two or three miles we just trotted along west down the
Ozark Trail Half a mile west past the Buckeye schoolhouse, we saw two saddle
horses tied to the fence, the Black Joker, wild and mean, that Grandma's
oldest boy, Warren, rode; and an old tame family horse that the two younger
kids, Lawrence and Leonard, rode double.
"I see Warren's sneaked out that Black Joker horse and rode him to
school again. That fool horse is loco."
I set there in the seat all loose and limber, both knees under my chin,
sort of thinking, and then I told Grandma, "Mama'll need me home."
Grandma looked down at me and she put her arm around me and pulled me
over close to her in the buggy seat, and I held one rein in each hand and
let both hands fall down across her lap. "You're worried, too. You're a
worried little man, that's what you are, a worried little man."
"Gramma."
"Yes."
''You know somethin', Gramma? My mama don't never go out an' visit th'
other people acrost th' alley."
"Why not?"
"She jest stays an' stays an' stays home in that ole Lon'on House."
"Do any of the neighbor ladies ever come around to visit and talk with
Nora?" Grandma asked me.
"Huh uh. Never nobody."
"What does she do? Read a book?"
"Jest sets. Looks. Holds a book in 'er lap mosta th' time, but she
don't look where th' book's at. Jest out across th' whole room, an' whole
house an' ever'wheres."
"Is that right?"
"If Papa tells Mama somethin' she forgot, she gits so mad she goes off
up in th' top bedroom an' cries an' cries all day long. What makes it?" I
asked Grandma.
"Your mama is awful bad sick, Woody, awful bad. And she knows she's
awful bad sick. And it's so bad that she don't want any of you to know about
it ... because it's going to get a whole lot worse."
It was a minute or two that Grandma didn't say a word, and neither did
I. I stared along the side of the little old road. The rain had come and the
waters had run, and the road had wrinkled up like an old man's skin. Over
across the tops of the weeds I saw Grandma's big high cornfield.
"Gramma," I finally spoke up, "is Tom an' Bess trottin' fast 'cause
they wanta git home quicker?"
She didn't move or change the blank look on her face much. She said, "I
suppose they do."
"Is one horse a girl?"
"Bess."
"One's a boy horse?"
"Tom."
"They live together, don't they?"
"Same barn, yes. Same pasture. I don't know just exactly what you're
getting at."
"Can horses marry each other?"
"Can they do what?"
"Horses marry?"
"Well, now there you go again with your dang fool infernal questions. I
don't know whether horses get married or not."
"I wuz jest askin' Õ a."
"You're always asking, asking, asking something. And half of the time I
can't tell you the answer."
"Horses work, don't they?"
"You know they work. I wouldn't even have a cat or a dog or a chicken
on my place that didn't do his share of the work. Yes, even my old cat does
a lot of work. That reminds me, you know old Maltese Mother?"
"ïl', Ïl' one? Yeah. She knows me, too. Ever' time she sees me, she
comes over to where I am."
"She's got a whole bunch, seven of the nicest soft, fuzzy little
kittens that you ever saw."
"Seven? How many fingers is seven?"
"Like this. Here. All of the fingers on this hand and two fingers on
this hand. That's right."
"Are they good little kittens?"
"Now, what could a little kitten do, anyway, to be mean? They're the
best little fellers you ever saw. Sleepers. You never saw anything sleep
like these little baby cats."
"Where did ole Mother Maltese go to come back with this many little
baby kittens?"
"Out in the trees somewhere, somewhere out in the grass. She found one
little kitten here, and one little kitten over there, and one or two back
across yonder, and that's how she got all seven."
"Is it?"
"Certainly is."
"Why couldn't old Mama Maltese go and find all seven of 'em in jes' one
place?"
"Listen, young man, you'll just have to ask the mama cat. Watch your
horses there, straighten yourself up. You remember we're coming to the gate?
You jump out and open it."
I saw the old barb-wire gate coming and said, "Me? Shore! Shore! I know
ever'thing ya gotta do ta open a gate!"
The gate was tough. I put one arm around the post that was set in the
ground, and the other arm around the loose gatepole, and got sort of a
headlock on them both. I heard Grandma holler out, "I see the boys riding
down the road yonder! Come on!"
Then I heard a bunch of horses' hoofs coming down the road, and I
looked up and saw just a big white-looking cloud of dust coming at me. Out
of the dust I could hear the three boys whooping and barking, "Wwaaahoooo!
Yip! Yip! õÕÕÕÕiiiÒÒÒÅÅÅ! Looky ooouuuttt! Woodrow! Looky outttt!" The
thought of getting tromped under the horses' feet caused my eyes to fly open
like a goggle-eyed bee, and my two ears stood straight out from the sides of
my head.
My first thought was to drop the gatepole and run off into the weeds to
get clear of the horses. The boys were still coming straight at me and
yelling, "Gonna git run oovver! Run overr! Looky outtt, Woodrow! Gonna git
run over an' killed!"
The boys and the horses were within ten foot of me, when I decided that
I'd just hold the gate shut. I happened to take one last look back at the
little wire loop on top, and it had slipped into the notch where I'd been
trying to put it. The gate was shut good as she ever was. I fell down off of
the brace post backwards and scrambled up to my feet again, and made the
worst face I could, and yelled back at the boys, "Ya! Ya! Ya! Thought you
wuz smart! Thought you'z smart!"
Both horses run keeeblamm into the gate. Warren, riding the Black
Joker, was traveling too fast to turn or stop, or even slow down. Lawrence
and Leonard had figured on the gate being open, and their own dust had
blinded them. Their horse stopped so quick that the boys slid right about a
couple of feet up onto the horse's neck; the horse waved his head a time or
two and threw both kids down amongst the wires where Warren was rolling
around.
All of this time I mostly just run about three times as fast as the
wild horses, till I come to Grandma's buggy. I mounted the back of it, set
there all humped up, and watched the crazy rodeo back at the gate. There was
the Black Joker stamping around still crying and squeeling a little, over
yonder in the west corner of the cotton field; and over there in the east
corner, in a few wild weeds, just on the edge of the cotton patch, there was
the horse without a name; and yonder in the middle of the whole thing there
was a cloud of Oklahoma's very best dust, that looked about like where you'd
heaved a hand grenade; you might not believe it to stand back off and look
at it, but somewhere in that dust I knowed there was three awful tough boys.
You couldn't see the boys. Just the dust fogging up. But you could see a few
slivers of barb wire wiggling in the sun.
"Warren! Lawrence! Leonard!'' Grandma was just about to yell
her yeller out. "You boys! Where! Wait! Are you hurt!"
She waded into the dust and was fanning both arms, reaching in around
the loose wires and fishing for mean boys. Then all I saw was her hat
bobbing up and down as she bent over and stood up, and bent over again,
hunting for kids. In a few minutes the dust crawled off of its own accord,
like a big animal of some kind, away from the gate, across the little rutty
road.
"Pore ol 'Gran'ma! Leonard's got killed, an' Warren's got killed, an'
Lawrence got killed." I was setting on the back end of the buggy, looking.
Tears the size of teacups was oozing down my cheeks and I could taste the
slick salt when the tears run down to the corner of my mouth.
"Warren! Warren!" Grandma called. "What are you doing over here in this
old ditch! Are you hurt bad?"
Warren got up and tried to brush the dirt off of his self; but his
school clothes was so full of holes and rips that every time he brushed, he
tore a bigger hole somewhere. He was sobbing and his whole body was jerking,
and he told Grandma, "It was that little ornery runt, Woodrow, done it! I'm
gonna cave his head in for 'im!"
"Now, you just hold yourself, Mister Rough Rider," Grandma told Warren.
"Woodrow was doing the best he could. He was closing that gate for me. You
bigger boys had no reason to come ridin' down the road yelling and trying to
scare a little kid to death. I don't care if it did skin you up a little,
you need it." Then she got to looking around for another boy, and she found
one laying flat of his belly out in a clump of sumac bushes, and it was
Leonard puffing and blowing like he'd been shell-shocked in four wars.
"Leonard! You dead?" Grandma said to him.
Leonard jumped up so quick that it would have made a mountain lion look
slow, and he started running toward the buggy as hard as he could tear,
squawling out, "I'm goin' ta beat that little skunk inta th' ground. Goin'
ta tear him up just like he tore me up!" And he kept coming for the buggy.
I was breathing pretty hard, and sometimes not at all. I knew what he'd
do. I let myself just sort of slide over the back of the buggy seat and down
onto the cushion, and held the reins as tight as I could and bit my tongue,
and looked out over the horses' backs toward the house.
Grandma found Lawrence in the same patch of weeds, skint up just about
like the other two, some hide and some duds and some hair missing. Leonard
was climbing up on the buggy seat beside me. He drew his hand back and made
a pass at my head, and I ducked to one side and let the lick fly past. He
hit the back of the buggy seat with his hand and that made him a whole lot
madder. The next lick he swung, he caught me square on the side of the head,
and my ears rung like a steam ÓÁlliope. I fell down on the seat with my
hands covering my head, and he rung two or three harder ones around over my
skull. I squeezed out of his grip, but I banged my head on the sharp corner
of a heavy wooden box in the bottom of the buggy, and when I touched my hand
to the knot that raised up just above my ear, and seen blood all over my
fingers, I let out a scream that rattled pecans in trees for a mile around.
The horses heard me, and jumped like they'd been blistered with a
lightning whip. They jerked the loose reins out of my hand. Tom made a lunge
in his harness, a leather strap broke; then Bess got scared and jumped
sideways, and snapped a hitching chain; and then both horses started
snorting, laying their ears back, and running for the barn just like a
cyclone. Leonard fell back on the cushion of the buggy seat. I was still
doubled up in a ball rolling around with the wooden box on the floor boards.
Neither of us could get a chance to jump. The horses kept loping faster and
after they got the buggy in motion, they broke out into their hardest run.
Leonard got madder than ever, and every time the horses' hoofs hit the
ground, or the wheels went around, he would give me a good kick in the back.
He was barefooted and he didn't hurt me much, but when he saw he wasn't, he
decided just to put both of his feet on my neck and try to choke me. The
buggy wheels bounced against rocks, hit roots, and jolted both of us out of
our wits.
Grandma was within three feet of the buggy when the horses broke and
run away, and I could hear her hollering, "Whoa! Whoa! Tom! Bess! Stop them
horses! God Almighty! There's a hundred sticks of dynamite in that buggy!"
I heard the horses grunt, and heard the water in their bellies jostle
around, heard the air snorting through their nostrils, and their hoofs
beating against the ground.
"That box you're leanin' up against is fulla dynamite!" Leonard
hollered.
"I don't care!" I yelled at him.
"If this buggy turns over, we're gonners!" he told me.
I told him, "I cain't stop 'em!"
"I'm goin't' jump! Leave you with it!" he bellered.
"Jump! See if I care!" I told him.
Leonard got up and stood with his feet in the seat, and the first time
he got his chance, he piled over the side, and hit rolling through a patch
of bullhead sticker weeds. All I saw was the seat of his britches as he flew
over the wheels. And that left me banging all around over the floor of the
buggy with nothing but a box of dynamite, and TNT caps, to keep me company.
The post of the gate swung past, and I let out my breath when we missed it
by about an inch; but I looked ahead of the horses and saw that the whole
barn lot was standing full of things that we couldn't miss. Straight ahead
was a steam tractor, and beside that was a couple of wagons with their
tongues propped up on their singletrees. Here was a hog-oiling machine. A
pile of corn cobs was in our path. I could picture Grandpa's barn, barn lot,
all of his plows, tools, and machinery, blowing up over the tree tops; but
the old horses knew more about this place than I did, and they made a big
horseshoe bend around the thrasher, cut in real quick to shave the tractor,
sidestepped a little to pass the pile of cobs, and then curved wide again.
But when they made a run for the barn door, I told myself good-bye. The
whole barn was stacked full of more wagons, machinery and plows, and there
was a concrete slab running across the ground just as you went in the door,
which I knew was enough of a hump to throw that box of dynamite plumb out of
the buggy. With my ear against the box, I could hear the big sticks thumping
about inside.
But, all at once, the horses come to the door. They wheeled sideways
again and stopped; horses aiming one direction, and the buggy another.
For a minute I just laid there hugging the box. Then I made a quick
high dive over the seat, and lit on the ground. Warren and Leonard come
riding up and jumped off of their horse.
"You little devil, you! You've caused us enough trouble!"
Warren made a run and grabbed me by the neck. "Come on, Leonard! I got
'im for ya! Here th' little bastard is! Beat th' livin' hell out of 'im!"
"Hold `im!" Leonard was saying. "Hold 'im till I can get my belt loose!
I'm gonna whop blisters on yore little hide that a dollar bill won't cover!
Yore whole dam family ain't nuthin' but bad luck! Hold `im, Warren!"
Leonard took a few seconds to unloose his belt buckle and get it pulled
out of the loops. I was kicking and crying, not loud. I didn't want Grandma
to think I was bellering so's she could hear me; but I was fighting. I was
using every cuss word that ever was or ever will be.
Your old blisters won't hurt me. Your old stropping belt won't hurt
long. Your old arm will give out. You don't know. You think you're scaring
me. You think you're takin' some of my fight out of me. You'll
whip me now, and I'll look like I'm cryin', but I won't really be cryin'.
I'll be havin' tears in my eyes because I'm mad at you. My family can't help
what happened to them. My mama can't help what happened.
You used to be friendly and nice to my mama when she was pretty and
healthy, and people was nice to you because you was my mama's brothers. But
then, when she had some bad things happen to her, and lost her pretty house,
and got sick, and needed you to treat her 'nice, you stand off and how'l and
bark like a crazy bunch of coyotes, and laugh and poke fun at us. It makes
me tough enough to stand here and let you whack me acrost the back and the
neck and ears, and blister my shoulders with that little old flimsy leather
strop, and I don't even feel it.
I was thinking these things, but I only said, "Cowards! Two on one!"
"Here's one across yer bare legs, you little runt, just to remember
that you caused us a lot of trouble!" And Leonard wrapped the belt around my
legs.
"Hurts, don't it? I want yuh to feel it plumb down to yer bones! I want
it to hurt! Does it?"
"Don't," I told him.
"What? You mean I ain't comin' down hard enough on this here belt?"
Leonard doubled the strap up in his hands and said, "I can make you say,
'hurt'! I'll give it to you doubled up an' double hard! I'll make you crawl
up to me on yer hands and knees and say, 'hurt'!" He was beating me one lick
after another one, all over my body, stinging, raising ridges, making
bruises and welts. I was fighting Warren, trying to get loose from his grip.
"Lemme loose! I want loose! I'll stand right here!" I told him.
"Say, 'hurt'!" Leonard brought down another hard one around my bare
legs.
"Turn me loose! I won't run!" I told them.
And then Warren loosened his hold on my arms, and said, "I'll just see
if you've got nerve enough to stand up like a man and take your beatin'!" He
let go of me, and I stood there looking at Leonard while he drew back to
give me some more of the strap.
"Say it hurts!" Leonard said. "I want to know I ain't been wastin' my
time! Say it hurts!"
Warren warned me from behind, "Better say what he wants you to say.
It'll be over quicker. Go ahead. Say it's hurtin'!"
"Won't," I said back at him.
"You little hard-headed, hard-luck sonofabitch! I'll make you say what
I want, or I'll beat you into the ground!" Leonard started striking first
from one side, and then the other, without even taking time to say a word or
to breathe in between. 'Talk like I tell yuh ta talk!"
"Ain't," I told him.
Then Grandma spoke up right behind Leonard's back and said, "No, you
don't, you young Kaiser Bill! You're too dang mean to be a living son of
mine! Give it here!" Almost before he knew it, she yanked the belt out of
his hand, and Leonard ran about twenty feet away and stood there shivering.
He knew that Grandma was hell on wheels when she got her dander riled up.
Warren was talking up for Leonard. "That dam little old stinkin'
Woodrow was the cause of the whole thing, Ma."
"Hush your trap!" Grandma turned to Warren and said, "You're just as
much in on this as your mean brother is! And you're running your old ma
crazy, both of you together!" She wadded the belt up into a little ball in
her two hands. Lawrence stood beside Grandma, not saying much, just looking
at first one of us and then the other.
"I don't know," she said, standing there with big tears rolling down
her cheeks, "I don't know what to do. I just don't know what to try next!''
The three boys were wiggling their feet and toes around, ducking their
heads, looking at the ground, but not saying a word.
"Any of you young studs got anything to say for yourselves?"
Leonard talked out and said, "What good's he doin' us by comin' around?
We don't wanta hafta play with `im. We ain't a-gonna let 'im foller us! He's
just ol' Nora's little ol' sickly runt. I don't like 'im, an' I hate his
guts!"
Grandma made about four quick steps and grabbed Leonard by the shirt
collar. She wound her hand around a time or two in his shirt till she had a
good hold on him, and then she started pushing him backwards, taking big
long steps, and he was falling back, listening to her say, "I've told you
this a dozen times before, young buck! Nora is just as much my little girl
as you are my little boy, get that? Nora's dad was just as good, and some
ways a whole lot better than your dad! He was my first husband! Nora was our
only child!" She jammed him back up against the side of the barn and every
time she'd tell him a word, she'd push him back a little harder, trying to
jar him into thinking. "No. Nora's not like you. No. I remember how Nora
was, even away back when she was just your age. She went to my little
schoolhouse where I taught, over on the Deep Fork River, and she read her
books and got her lessons, and she helped me mark and grade the papers. She
liked pretty music and she sung songs and played her own chords on the
piano; and she learned just about everything pretty that she got a half a
chance, just half a chance to! She made herself at home everywhere she went,
and people liked her; and I was always proud of her because ... she ..." and
Grandma turned her head away from the boy up against the barn; and her hand
fell open and the belt fell down onto the ground, and she said, "Leonard,
there's your belt. There. Laying on the ground, there. Pick it up. Put it
back in your britches. They're falling off. Come on. Come over here by the
wagon. I'm going to set myself down there on the tongue. Here, now, come on
over here, all of you boys, and your ma's going to hug all of you. And I
want you to put your arms around me, too, just like you always did. Just
like everything was all right."
Grandma rested herself by sitting down on the wagon tongue, and the
boys looked out of the corners of their eyes at each other, and walked over,
a little slow, but they walked, and put their arms around her; loose at
first, and she used her own hands to take hold of their arms and make them
tighter around her neck and shoulders. When she did, the boys hugged her
tighter, and she closed her eyes, and moved her head from one side to the
other, first brushing the bosom of one kid, and then the shirt, and the
shoulder of another.
She kept her eyes closed and said, "Woodrow, don't stand away over
there by yourself. You belong in my lap here. Come on and crawl up. That's
it. You belong with your little old curly head snuggled right close up, just
like that. God, this is good! Yes, all of you are my boys, doing the best
you've been taught. All of you will make mistakes, but, Lord, I can't make
any difference between you!"
There wasn't a sound out of any of the boys. I was holding my head up
under Grandma's mouth, listening to her talk real slow and long and soft;
and my eyes dripped tears down across the front of her bosom and faded her
town dress. The other three boys moved their heads, kept their eyes down.
"I'm sorry, Ma."
"Me, too, Ma."
"Don't cry, Maw."
"Gramma, I ain't mad at nobody."
Chapter IV
NEW KITTENS
Up at the house an hour later, Warren and Leonard had poured water and
washed their cuts clean, and drifted off into the house getting on some
clean clothes. Grandma talked a little to herself, getting some coffee
ground for supper. Lawrence trotted out into the yard in a few minutes and I
set on the stone steps of the porch and watched him. He pranked around under
the two big oak trees and then walked around the corner of the house.
I followed him. He was the littlest one of Grandma's boys. He was more
my size. I was about five and he was eight. I followed him back to a
rosebush where he pointed to old Mother Maltese and her new little bunch of
kittens. He was telling me all there is to know about cats.
First, we just rubbed the old mama cat on the head, and he told me she
was older than either one of us. "Cat's been here longer'n me even."
"How old is Ïl' mama cat?" I asked Lawrence.
"Ten."
"An' you're jest eight?" I said.
"Yeah."
"She's all ten fingers old. You ain't but jest this many fingers old,"
I went on.
"She's two older'n me," he said.
"Wonder how come you th' biggest?"
"Cause, crazy, I'm a boy, an' she's a cat!"
"Feel how warm an' smooth she is," I told him.
"Yeah," he said, "perty slick, all right; but th' little 'ums is th'
slickest. But ol' mama cat don't like for strangers ta come out here an'
stick yore han' down in her box an' feel on her little babies.''
"I been out here 'fore this," I told him, "so that makes me not no
stranger."
"Yeah," he told me back, "I know that; but then, you went back ta town
ag'in, see, an' course, that makes you part of a stranger."
"How much stranger am I? I ain't no plumb whole stranger; mama cat
knowed me when I wuz jest a little teeny weeny baby; jest this long;
an' my mama had ta keep me all nice an' warm jest like them
little baby cats, so's I wouldn't freeze, so's nuthin' wouldn't git me." I
was still stroking the old cat's head, and feeling of her with my fingers.
She was holding her eyes shut real tight, and purring almost loud
enough for Grandma to hear her in the house. Lawrence and me kept watching
and listening. The old mama cat purred louder and louder.
Then I asked Lawrence, "What makes 'er sound that a-way in 'er head?"
And he told me, "Purrin', that's what she's doin'."
"Makes 'er purr?" I asked him.
"She does it 'way back inside 'er head some way," Lawrence was telling
me.
"Sounds like a car motor," I said.
"She ain't got no car motor in 'er," he said.
"Might," I said.
"I don't much think she has, though."
"Might have a little 'un, kinda like a cat motor; I mean a regler
little motor fer cats," I said.
"What'd she be wantin' with a cat motor?"
"Lotsa things is got motors in 'em. Motors is engines. Engines makes
things go. Makes noise jest like ol' mama cat. Motor makes wheels go 'round,
so cats might have a real little motor ta make legs go, an' tail go, an'
feet move, an' nose go, an' ears wiggle, an' eyes go 'round, an' mouth fly
open, an' mebbe her stomach is' er gas tank." I was running my hand along
over the old mama cat's fur, feeling of each part as I talked, head, tail,
legs, mouth, eyes, and stomach; and the old cat had a big smile on her face.
"Wanta see if she's really got a motor inside of 'er? I'll go an' git
Ma's butcher knife, an' you hold 'er legs, an' I'll cut er belly open; an'
if she's got a motor in 'er, by jacks, I wanta see it! Want me to?" Lawrence
asked me.
"Cut 'er belly open?" I asked him. "Ya might'n find 'er motor when ya
got cut in there!"
"I c'n find it, if she's got one down in there! I helped Pa cut rabbits
an' squirrels an' fishes open, an' I never did see no motor in them!"
"No, but did you ever hear a rabbit er a squirrel either one, or a fish
make a noise like mama cat makes?"
"No. Never did."
"Well, mebbe that's why they ain't got no motor. Mebbe they gotta
differnt kinda motor. Don't make no kind of a noise."
"Might be. An' some of th' time mama cat don't make no noise either;
'cause some of th' time ya cain't even hear no motor in 'er belly. What
then?"
"Maybe she's just got th' key turned off!"
"Turned off?" Lawrence asked me.
"Might be. My papa's gotta car. His car's gotta key. Ya turn th' key
on, an' th' car goes like a cat. Ya turn th' key off, an' it quits."
'There yore hand goes ag'in! Didn' I tell you not ta touch them little
baby kittens? They ain't got no eyes open ta see with yet; you cain't put
yore hands on' em!" He cut his eyes around at me.
"Ohhhhhppppp! All right. I'm awful, awful sorry, mama cat; an' I'm
awful, awful sorry, little baby cats!" And I let my hand fall back down on
the old mama cat's back.
"That's all right ta pat 'er all you want, but she'll reach up an" take
'er claws, an' rip yore hand plumb wide open if you make one of her little
cats cry!" he told me.
"Know somethin', Lawrence, know somethin'?"
"What about?" he asked me.
"People says when I wuz a baby, jest like one of these here little baby
cats, only a little bit bigger, mebbe, my mama got awful bad sick when I wuz
borned under th' covers."
"I heard Ma an' them talk about her," he told me.
"What did they talk about?" I asked him.
"Oohhh, I dunno, she wuz purty bad off.''
"What made 'er bad off?"
"Yer dad."
"My papa did?"
"What people says."
"He's good ta me. Good ta my mama. What makes people say he made my
mama git sick?"
"Politics."
"What's them?''
"I dunno what politics is. Just a good way to make some money. But you
always have troubles. Have fights. Carry two guns ever' day. Yore dad likes
lots of money. So he got some people ta vote fer 'im, so then he got 'im two
guns an' went around c'lectin' money. Yore ma didn't like yore dad ta always
be pokin' guns, shootin', fightin', an' so, well, she just worried an'
worried, till she got sick at it--an' that was when you was borned a baby
not much bigger'n one of these here little cats, I reckon.'' Lawrence was
digging his fingernails into the soft white pine of the box, looking at the
nest of cats. "Funny thing 'bout cats. All of 'em's got one ma, an' all of
'ems differnt colors. Which is yore pet color? Mine's this 'un, an' this
'un, an' this 'un."
"I like all colors cats. Say, Lawrence, what does crazy mean?"
"Means you ain't got good sense.''
"Worried?"
"Crazy's more'n just worry."
"Worse'n worryin'?"
"Shore. Worry starts, an' you do that fer a long, long time, an' then
maybe you git sick 'er somethin', an' ya go all, well, you just git all
mixed up 'bout ever'thing."
"Is ever'body sick like my mama?"
"I don't guess."
"Reckin could all of our folks cure my mama?"
"Might. Wonder how?"
"If ever single livin' one of 'em would all git together an' git rid of
them ol' mean, bad politics, they'd all feel lots better, an' wouldn't fight
each other so much, an' that'd make my mama feel better."
Lawrence looked out through the leaves of the bushes. "Wonder where
Warren's headin', goin' off down toward th' barn? Be right still; he's
walkin' past us. He'll hear us talkin'."
I whispered real low and asked Lawrence, "Whatcha bein' so still for?
'Fraida Warren?"
And Lawrence told me, "Hushhh. Naw. 'Fraid fer th' cats."
"Why 'bÏut th' cats?"
"Warren don't like cats."
"Why?" I was still whispering.
"Just don't. Be still. Ssshhh."
"Why?" I went on.
"Sez cats ain't no good. Warren kills all th' new little baby cats that
gits born'd on th' place. I had these hid out under th' barn. Don't let 'im
know we're here...."
Warren got within about twenty feet of us, and we could see his long
shadow falling over our rosebush; and then for a little time we couldn't see
him, and the rosebush blocked out of sight of him. Still, we could hear his
new sharp-toed leather shoes screaking every time he took a step. Lawrence
tapped me on the shoulder. I looked around and he was motioning for me to
grab up one side of the white pine box. I got a hold and he grabbed the
other side. We skidded the box up close to the rock foundation of the house,
and partly in behind the rosebush.
Lawrence held his breath and I held my hand over my mouth. Warren's
screaky shoes was the only sound I could hear. Lawrence laid his body down
over the box of cats. I laid down to hide the other half of the box, and the
screak, screak, screak got louder. I whiffed my nose and smelled the loud
whang of hair tonic on Warren's hair. His white silk shirt threw flashes of
white light through the limbs of the roses, and Lawrence moved his lips so
as to barely say, "Montgomery girl." I didn't catch him the first time, so
he puckered his lips to tell me again, and when he bent over my way, he
stuck a thorn into his shoulder, and talked out too loud:
"Montgomery--"
The screak of Warren's shoes stopped by the side of the bush. He looked
all around, and took a step back, then one forward. And he had us trapped.
I didn't have the guts to look up at him. I heard his shoes screak and
I knew that he was rocking from one foot to the other one, standing with his
hands on his hips, looking down on the ground at Lawrence and me. I shivered
and could feel Lawrence quiver under his shirt. Then I turned my head over
and looked out from under Lawrence's arm, both of us still hugging the box,
and heard Warren say, "What was that you boys was a-sayin'?"
"Tellin' Woody about somebody," Lawrence told Warren.
"Somebody? Who?" Warren didn't seem to be in any big rush.
"Somebody. Somebody you know," Lawrence said.
"Who do I know?" Warren asked him.
"Th' Mon'gom'ry folks,'' Lawrence said.
"You're a couple of dirty little low-down liars! All you know how to do
is to hide off in under some Goddamed bush, an' say silly things about other
decent people!" Warren told us.
"We wuzn't makin' no fun, swear ta God," Lawrence told him.
"What in the hell was you layin' under there talkin' about? Somethin'
your're tryin' to hide! Talk out!"
"I seen you was all nice an' warshed up clean, an' told Woody you was
goin' over ta Mon'gom'ry's place.''
"What else?"
"Nuthin else. 'At's all I said, swear ta God, all I told you, wasn't
it, Woody?"
" 'S all I heard ya say," I told him.
"Now ain't you a pair of little old yappin' pups? You know dam good an'
well you was teasin' me from behind 'bout Lola Montgomery! How come you two
hidin' here in th' first place? Just to see me walk past you with all of my
clean clothes on? See them new low-cut shoes? See how sharp th' toes are?
Feel with your finger, both of you, feel! That's it! See how sharp? I'd
ought to just take that sharp toe and kick both of your little rears."
"Quit! Quit that pushin' me!" Lawrence was yelling as loud as he could,
hoping Grandma would hear. Warren pushed him on the shoulder with the bottom
of his shoe, and tried to roll Lawrence over across the ground. Lawrence
swung onto his box of cats so tight that Warren had to kick as hard as he
could, and push Lawrence off the box.
The only thing I could think of to do was jump on top of the box and
cover it up. Lawrence was yelling as loud as he could yell. Warren was
laughing. I wasn't saying anything.
"Whut's that box you're a holdin' onto there so tight?" Warren asked
me.
"Jest a plain ol' box!" Lawrence was crying and talking.
"Jest a plain wooden box," I told Warren.
"What's on th' inside of it, runts?"
"Nuthin's in it!"
"Jist a ol' empty one!"
And Warren put his shoe sole on my back and pushed me over beside
Lawrence. "I'll just take me a look! You two seems mighty interested in
what's inside of that box!"
"You Ïl' mean outfit, you! God, I hate you! You go on over an' see yore
ol' 'Gomery girl, an' leave us alone! We ain't a-hurtin' you!" Lawrence was
jumping up. He started to draw back and fight Warren, but Warren just took
his open hand and pushed Lawrence about fifteen feet backwards, and he fell
flat, screaming.
Warren put his foot on my shoulder and give me another shove. I went
about three feet. I tried to hold onto the box, but the whole works turned
over. The old mama cat jumped out and made a circle around us, meowing first
at Warren, and then at me and the little baby kittens cried in the split
cotton seed.
"Cat lovers!" Warren told us.
"You g'wan, an' let us be! Don't you tech them cats! Ma! Ma! Warr'n's
gonna hurt our cats!" Lawrence squawled out.
Warren kicked the loose cotton seed apart. "Just like
tearin' up a bird's nest!" he said. He put the sharp toe of his
shoe under the belly of the first little cat, and threw it up against the
rock foundation. "Meoww! Meoww! You little chicken killers! Egg stealers!"
He picked the second kitten up in the grip of his hand, and squeezed till
his muscles bulged up. He swung the kitten around and around, something like
a Ferris wheel, as fast as he could turn his arm, and the blood and entrails
of the kitten splashed across the ground, and the side of the house. Then he
held the little body out toward Lawrence and me. We looked at it, and it was
just like an empty hide. He threw it away out over the fence.
Warren took the second kitten, squeezed it, swung it over his head and
over the top wire of the fence. The third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and
seventh.
The poor old mama cat was running backwards, crossways, and all around
over the yard with her back humped up, begging against Warren's legs, and
trying to jump up and climb up his body to help her babies. He boxed her
away and she came back. He kicked her thirty feet. She moaned along the
rocks, smelling of her babies' blood and insides. She scratched dirt and dug
grass roots; then she made a screaming noise that chilled my blood and
jumped six feet, clawing at Warren's arm. He kicked her in the air and her
sides were broke and caved in. He booted her up against the side of the
house, and she laid there wagging her tail and meowing; and Warren grabbed
the box and splintered it against the rocks and the mama cat's head. He
grabbed up two rocks and hit her in the stomach both shots. He looked at me
and Lawrence, spit on us, threw the loose cotton seed into our faces, and
said, "Cat-lovin' bastards!" And he started walking on away toward the barn.
"You ain't no flesh an' blood of mine!" Lawrence cried after him.
"Hell with you, baby britches! Hell with you. I don't even want to be
yore dam brother!" Warren said over his shoulder.
"You ain't my uncle, neither," I told him, "not even my mama's half
brother! You ain't even nobody's halfway brother! I'm glad my mama ain't no
kin ta you! I'm glad I ain't!" I told him.
"Awwww. Whattaya know, whattaya know, you half-starved little runt?"
Warren was turned around, standing in the late sun with his shirt white and
pretty in the wind. "You done run yore mama crazy just bein' born! You
little old hard-luck bringer! You dam little old insane-asylum baby!" And
Warren walked away on down to the barn.
Then Lawrence rolled up onto his feet off of the grass and tore around
the side of the house hollering and telling Grandma what all Warren had done
to the cats.
I scrambled up over the fence and dropped down into the short-weed
patch. The old mama cat was twisting and moaning and squeezing through at
the bottom of the wire, and making her way out where Warren had slung her
little babies.
I saw the old mama walk around and around her first kitten in the
weeds, and sniffle, and smell, and lick the little hairs; then she took the
dead baby in her teeth, carried it through the weeds, the rag weeds,
gypsums, and cuckle burrs that are a part of all of Oklahoma.
She laid the baby down when she come to the edge of a little trickling
creek, and held up her own broken feet when she walked around the kitten
again, circling, looking down at it, and back up at me.
I got down on my hands and knees and tried to reach out and pet her.
She was so broke up and hurting that she couldn't stand still, and she
pounded the damp ground there with her tail as she walked a whole circle all
around me. I took my hand and dug a little hole in the sandy creek bank and
laid the dead baby in, and covered it up with a mound like a grave.
When I seen the old Mama Maltese holding her eyes shut with the lids
quivering and smell away into the air, I knew she was on the scent of her
second one.
When she brought it in, I dug the second little grave.
I was listening to her moan and choke in the weeds, dragging her belly
along the ground, with her two back legs limber behind her, pulling her body
with her front feet, and throwing her head first to one side and then to the
other.
And I was thinking: Is that what crazy is?
Chapter V
MISTER CYCLOME
"Here I am, Papa!" I ripped out the east door and went running down to
where Papa was. "Here I am! I wanta help shoot!"
"Get back away from that hole! Dynamite!" He hadn't noticed me as I
trotted out.
"Where 'bouts?" I was standing not more than three feet away from the
hole he'd been drilling through a rock' "Where?"
"Run! This way!" He grabbed me in his arms, covered me over with his
jacket and fell down flat against the ground, "Lay still! Down!"
The whole hill jarred. Rocks howled out over our heads.
"I wanna see!" I was trying to fight my way out from under him. "Lemme
out!"
"Keep down!" He hugged his jacket around me that much tighter. "Those
rocks just went up. They'll be down in a jiffy!"
I felt him duck his head down against mine. The rocks thumped all
around us and several peppered the jacket. The cloth was stretched tight. It
sounded like a war drum. "Wowie!" I said to Papa.
"You'll think, Wowie!" Papa laughed when he got up. He brushed his
clothes off good. "One of those rocks hit you on the head, and you wouldn't
think anything for a long time!"
"Le's go blow another'n up!" I was pacing around like a cat wanting
milk.
"All right! Come on! You can take the little hoe and dig a nice
ten-foot hole!"
"Goshamighty! How deep?"
"Teen feet."
"Lickety split! Lickety split!" I was chopping out a hole with the
little hoe. "Is this 'teen feet deep?"
"Keep on with your work!" Papa acted like a chain-gang boss. "Whew! I
don't believe I ever did see it get so hot this late in the stimmer. But I
guess we'll have to keep digging without air! We've just got to get this old
London Place fixed up. Then we can sell it to somebody and get some money
and buy us another better place. You like that?"
"I don't like nuthin' bad. I wanta move. Mama wants ta move, too. So
does Roy an' Clara, an' ever'body else."
"Yes, little boy, I know, I know."' Papa knocked the blue
rock smoke out of the hole every time his crowbar come down. "I like
everything that's good, don't you?"
"Mama had a piano an' lotsa good things when she was a little kid,
didn't she?" I kept leaning on the handle of my hoe. "An" now she ain't got
no nice things."
"Yes. She always loved the good things." Papa pulled a red bandana out
of his hip pocket and wiped the sweat from his face. "You know, Woody boy,
I'm afraid."
"'Fraida what?"
"This infernal heat. It's got me guessing." Papa looked all around in
every direction, sniffed in the air. "Don't know exactly. But it feels like
to me there's not a single breath of air stirring."
"Purty still, all right. I'm sweatin'!"
"Not a leaf. Not a blade of grass. Not a feather. Not a spider-web
stirring." He turned his face away to the north. A quick, fast breath of
cool air drifted across the hill.
"Good Ïl' cool wind!" I was puffing my lungs full of the new air
stirring. "Good ol', good Ïl', cool, cool wind!"
"Yes, I feel the cool wind." He stayed down on his hands, looking
everywhere, listening to every little sound. "And I don't like it!" He
yelled at me. "And you hadn't ought to say that you like it, either!"
"Papa, what'sa matter, huh?" I laid on my belly as close up beside Papa
as I could get, and looked everywhere that he did. "Papers an' leafs an'
feathers blowin'. You ain't really scared, are ya, Papa?"
Papa's voice sounded shaky and worried. "What do you know about
cyclones? You've never even seen one yet! Quit popping off at your mouth!
Everything that I've been working and fighting for in my whole life is tied
up right here in this old London Place!"
I never thought that I would see my dad so afraid of anything.
" 'Taint no good!"
"Shut your little mouth before I shut it for you!"
" 'Tain't no good!"
"Don't you dare talk back to your papa!"
" 'Tain't no good!"
"Woody, I'll split you hide!" Then he let his head drop down till his
chin touched the bib of his overhalls and his tears wet the watch pocket.
"What makes you say it's not any good, Woody?"
"Mama said it." I rolled a foot or two away from him. An' Mama cries
alla th' time, too!"
The wind rustled against the limbs of the locust trees across the road
running up the hill. The walnut trees frisked their heads in the air and
snorted at the wind getting harder. I heard a low whining sound everywhere
in the air as the spider webs, feathers, old flying papers, and dark clouds
swept along the ground, picking up the dust, and blocking out the sky.
Everything fought and pushed against the wind, and the wind fought
everything in its way.
"Woody, little boy, come over here."
"I'm a-gonna run." I stood up and looked toward the house.
"No, don't run." I had to stand extra still and quiet to hear Papa talk
in the wind. "Don't run. Don't ever run. Come on over here and let me hold
you on my lap."
I felt a feeling of some kind come over me like the chilly winds coming
over the hot hill. I turned nervous and scared and almost sick inside. I
fell down into Papa's lap, hugging him around the neck so tight his whiskers
rubbed my face nearly raw. I could feel his heart beating fast and I knew he
was afraid.
"Le's run!"
"You know, I'm not ever going to run any more, Woody, Not from people.
Not from my own self. Not from a cyclone."
"Not even from a lightnin' rod?"
"You mean a bolt of lightning? No. Not even from a streak of
lightning!"
"Thunner? `Tater wagon?"
"Not from thunder. Not from my own fear.''
"Skeerd?"
"Yes. I'm scared. I'm shaking right this minute."
"I felt ya shakin' when th' cyclome first come."
"Cyclone may miss us, little curly block. Then again, it may hit right
square on top of us. I just want to ask you a question. What if this cyclone
was to reach down with its mean tail and suck away everything we've got here
on this hill? Would you still like your old Papa? Would you still come over
and sit on my lap and hold me this tight around the neck?"
"I'd hug tighter."
"That's all I want to know." He straightened up a little and put both
arms around me so that when the wind blew colder I felt warmer. "Let's let
the wind get harder. Let's let the straw and the feathers fly! Let the old
wind go crazy and pound us over the head! And when the straight winds pass
over and the twisting winds crawl in the air like a rattlesnake in boiling
water, let's you and me holler back at it and laugh it back to where it come
from! Let's stand up on our hind legs, and shake our fists back into the
whole crazy mess, and holler and cuss and rave and laugh and say, 'Old
Cyclone, go ahead! Beat your bloody brains out against my old tough hide!
Rave on! Blow! Beat! Go crazy! Cyclone! You and I are friends! Good old
Cyclone!' "
I jumped up to my feet and hollered, "Blow! Ha! Ha! Blow, wind! Blow!
I'm a Cyclome! Ha! I'm a Cyclome!"
Papa jumped up and danced in the dirt. He circled his pile of tools,
patted me on the head, and laughed out, "Come on, Cyclone, let 'er ripple!"
"Chhaaarrrliee!" Mama's voice cut through all of the laughing and
dancing and the howling of the wind across the whole hill. "Where are you?"
"We're down here fighting with a Cyclone!" "Chasin' storms an' hittin'
'em!" I put in.
"Whhaaattt?"
Papa and me snickered at each other.
"Wrestling a Cyclone!"
"Tell 'er I am, too," I told Papa.
Grandma and Mama walked through the trash blowing in the wind and found
me and Papa patting our hands together and dancing all around the dynamite
and tools. "What on earth has come over you two?"
"Huh?"
"You're crazy!" Grandma looked around her.
The wind was filling the whole sky with a blur of dry grass, tumbling
weeds, and scooting gravel, fine dust, and sailing leaves. Hot rain began to
whip us.
"We're heading for a storm cellar, and you're coming with us. Here's a
raincoat."
"Who will carry this Sawhorse?" Papa asked them.
"I wanta wade th' water!" I said.
"No you won't. I'll carry you myself!" Mama said. "Give him to me!"
Papa joked at Mama. "Put him right up here on my shoulders! Now the raincoat
around him. We'll splash every mudhole dry between here and Oklahoma City!
We're Cyclone Fighters! Did you know that, Nora?"
The wind staggered Papa along the path. Grandma grunted and throwed her
weight against the storm. Mama was buttoning up a slicker and bogging in the
slick clay in the path.
"This rain is like a river cutting loose!" Papa was saying under my
coat. He poked his face out between two buttons and took two steps up and
slid one step back.
At the top of the hill the water was deeper, and in the dear alley the
wind hit us harder.
"Charlie! Help Grandma, there! She's fell down!'' Mama said.
Papa turned around and took Grandma by the hand and pulled her to her
feet. "I'm all right! Now! Head on for the cellar!"
I felt the wind drive against me so hard that I had to hug onto Papa's
neck as tight as I could. The wind hit us again and drove us twenty feet
down the alley in the wrong direction. Papa's shoes went over their tops in
mud and he stood spraddle-legged and panted for air. "You're choking my wind
off! Hold on around my head!"
The wind rolled tubs and spun planks of ripped lumber through the air.
Trash piles and bushel baskets sailed against clothes-line. Barn doors
banged open and shut and splintered into a hundred pieces. Rain shot like a
solid wall of water and Papa braced his feet in the soggy manure, and
yelled, "You all right, Wood?" I told him, "I'm all right! You?"
A wild push of wind whined for a minute like a puppy under a box and
then roared down the alley, squealing like a hundred mad elephants. My coat
ripped apart and turned wrongside out over my head and I grabbed a tight
hold around Papa's forehead. We staggered twenty or thirty more feet down
the alley and fell flat in some deep cow tracks behind a chicken pen.
"Charlie! Are you and Woodrow all right?" I heard Mama yelling down the
alley. I couldn't see ten feet in her direction.
"You take Grandma on to the cellar!" Papa was yelling out from under
the rubber raincoat. "We'll be there in a minute! Go on! Get in!"
I was laying at first with my feet in a hole of manurey water, but I
twisted and squirmed and finally got my head above it. "Lemme loose!"
"You keep your head down!" Papa ducked me again in the hole of watery
manure. "Stay where you are!"
"Yer drownin' me in cow manure!" I finally managed to gurgle.
"Keep down there!"
"Papa?"
"Yes. What?" He was choking for air.
"Are you and me still Cyclome Fighters?"
"We lost this first round, didn't we?" Papa laughed under the raincoat
till cellars heard him ten blocks around. "But well make it! Just as soon's
I get a little whiff of fresh air. Well make 'er here in a minute! Won't we,
manure head?"
"Mama an' Grandma's better Cyclome Fighters than we are!" I laughed and
snorted into the slush pool under my nose. "They done got to th' storm
cellar, an' left us in a 'nure hole! Ha!"
Phone wires whistled and went with the wind. Packing boxes from the
stores down in town raised from their alleys and flew above the trees.
Timbers from barns and houses clattered through windows, and cows bawled and
mooed in the yards, tangled their horns in chicken-wire fences and
clotheslines. Soggy dogs streaked and beat it for home. Ditches and streets
turned into rivers and backyards into lakes. Bales of hay splitting apart
blew through the sky like pop-corn sacks. The rain burned hot. Everything in
the world was fighting against everything in the sky. This was the hard
straight pushing that levels the towns before it and lays the path low for
the twisting, sucking, whirling tail of the cyclone to rip to shreds.
Papa wrapped me in the raincoat and hugged me as tight as he could. We
crawled behind a cow barn to duck the wind, but the cow barn screamed like a
woman run down in the streets, tumbled over on its side, and the first whisk
of the wind caught the open underside and booted the whole barn fifty feet
in the air. We fell six feet forward. I hugged around Papa's neck. He turned
me loose with both hands and swung onto a clothesline, slipping his hands
along the wires, pushing off sacks, mops, hay and rubbish of all kinds till
we got to the back of the first house. He edged his way to the next house
and felt along their clothesline. In a minute or two we come to within
fifteen feet of the cellar door where Grandma and Mama had gone with the
neighbors. Papa crawled along the ground, dragging me underneath him.
"Nora! Nora!" Papa banged against the slanting cellar door with his
fists hard enough to compete with the twister. "Let us in! It's Charlie!"
"An' meee!" I let out from under the coat.
The door opened and Papa wedged his shoulder against it. Five or six
neighbor men and women heaved against the door to push it back against the
wind.
I was just as wet as any catfish in any creek ever was or ever will be
when Papa finally got into the cellar.
Mama grabbed me up into her lap where she was setting down on a case of
canned fruit. A lantern or two shot a little gleam of light through the
shadows of ten or fifteen people packed into the cellar.
"Boy! You know, Mama, me an' Papa is really Cyclome Fighters!" I
jabbered off and shook my head around at everybody.
"How's your papa? Charlie! Are you all right?"
"Just wet with cow manure!"
Everybody laughed and hollered under the ground.
"Sing to me," I whispered to Mama.
She had already been rocking me back and forth, humming the tune to an
old song. "What do you want me to sing?"
"That. That song."
"The name of that song is 'The Sherman Cyclone.'"
"Sing that."
And so she sang it:
You could see the storm approaching
And its cloud looked deathlike black
And it was through
Our little city
That it left
Its deathly track.
And I drifted off to sleep thinking about all of the people in the
world that have worked hard and had somebody else come along and take their
life away from them.
The door was opened back and the man in a slicker was saying, "The
worst of it's gone!"
Papa yelled up the steps, "How do things look out there?"
"Pretty bad! Done a lot of damage!" I could see the man's big pair of
rubber boots sogging around in the mudhole by the door. "She passed off to
the south yonder! Hurry out, and you can still see the tail whipping!"
I jumped loose from Mama and slid down off her lap. "I'm a-gonna see it
gitt a-whippin'!" I was talking to Papa and following him out the door.
"Out south yonder. See?" The man pointed. "Still whipping!"
"I see it! I see it! That big ole long whip! I see it!" I waded out
into the holes of water barefooted and squirted mud between my toes. "I hate
you, Ïl' Cyclome! Git outta here!"
The clouds in the west rolled away to the south and the sun struck down
like a clear Sunday morning across town. Screen doors slammed and cellar
doors swung open. People walked out in little lines like the Lord had rung a
dinner bell. A high wind still whipped across the town. Wet hunks of trash
waved on telephone poles and wires. Scattered hay and junk of every calibre
covered the ground for as far as my eyes could travel. Kids tore out looking
for treasures. Boys and girls loped across yards and pointed and screamed at
the barns and houses wrecked. Ladies in cotton dresses splashed across
little roads to kiss each other. I watched for a block or two around and
listened to some people laugh and some people cry.
Mama walked along in front of Grandma. She didn't say much. "I'm
anxious to see over the rim of that hill," she told us "What's over it?" I
asked her.
"Nora! Grandma! Hurry up!" Papa waved from the alley where we bad been
blown off of our feet in the storm. "Here comes Roy and Clara!"
"Roy and Clara!" Grandma hustled up a little faster. "Where have they
been during all of this?"
"In th' school cellar, I suppose." Mama looked up the alley and seen
them splashing mudholes dry coming toward us.
"Why did ya stay in that Ïl' school cellar?" I bawled them out when
they walked up. "Me an' Papa had a fight with a cyclome twister all by
ourselfs! Ya!"
"Nora." Papa talked the quietest I had ever heard him. "Grandma. Come
here. Look. Look at the house."
We walked in a little bunch to the top rim of the hill. He pointed down
the clay path we had come up to the cellar. The sun made everything as clear
as a crystal. The air had been thrashed and had a good bath in the rain.
There we saw our old London House. Papa almost whispered, "What's left of
it."
The London House stood there without a roof. It looked like a fort that
had lost a hard battle. Rock walls partly caved in by flying wreckage and by
the push of the twister. Our back screen door jerked off of its hinges and
wrapped around the trunk of my walnut tree.
Papa got to the back door first and busted into the kitchen.
"Hello, kitchen." Mama shook her head and looked all around. "Well,
we've got a nice large sky for a roof, anyway." She saw very little of her
own furniture in the kitchen. Every single window glass was gone. Water and
mud on the floor come above our shoe tops. She turned around and picked me
up and lifted me up on the eating table, telling me, "You stay up here,
little waterbug."
"I wanta wade in th' water!" I was setting on the edge of the table
kicking my bare feet at the water in the floor. "I wanta git my feet wet!"
"There's all kinds of glass and sharp things on this floor. You might
cut your feet. Just look at that cupboard!" Mama waded across the kitchen.
The cupboard was face down and half under water. Dishes smashed in a
thousand pieces laid all around. Joints of stove pipe, brooms, mops, flour
sacks half full, aprons, coats, and pots, and pans, hay, weeds, roots, bark,
bowls with a few bites of food still in them. She pointed to a big blue
speckled pot and said, "Mister Cyclone didn't wash my pots any too clean."
"You don't seem to care much." Papa was nervous and breathing hard. He
sloshed all around the room, touching everything with his fingers and
caressing the mess of wet trash like it was a prize-winning bull, sick and
down with the colic. "Jesus! Look at everything! Look! This is the last
straw. This is our good-bye!"
"Good-bye to what?" Mama kept her eyes looking around over the house.
"What?"
Clara backed up to the eating table. "Hey, Woodblock," she said, "climb
up on my back. I'll take you for a horseback ride to the front room!''
"You children hadn't ought to be joking and playing around, not at a
time like this!" Papa cried and the tears wet his face like a baby.
"Gitty up!" I kicked Clara easy with my heels and waved my hands in the
air above her head. "Swim this big Ïl' kinoodlin' river! Gitty up!" I hugged
on around her neck as tight as I could while she pitched a few times and
splashed her feet in the water. Then I yelled back, "C'mon, Papa! Let's swim
th' big river, an' fight th' mean Ïl' hoodlum leeegion!"
"I'm coming to help fight! Wait for me!" Mama cut in splashing the
water ahead of us. She jumped up and down and splattered slush and wet flour
and mud and sooty water all over her dress and two feet or three up on the
rock walls of the kitchen. "Splash across the river! Whoopie! Splash across
the quicksand! Here we come! All of us movie stars, to fight the crooks and
stealers! Whoopie!"
"Ha! Ha! Look at Mama fightin'!" I hollered at everybody.
"Mama's a good Cyclone Fighter, too, ha?" Clara was laughing and
kicking slushy filth all over the place. "Come on, Papa! We got to go and
keep fighting this cyclone!''
Mama slid her feet through the water, sending long ripples and waves
busting against the walls. "Charlie, come on here! Look at this next room!"
Clara rode me on her back once around the whole front room. Sofa upside
down in the middle of the floor, its hair and springs scattered for fifty
feet out the south window. Papers, envelopes, pencils floated on top of the
water on the floor. The big easy chair in the corner was dropped on its side
like a fighter stopped in his tracks. Big square sandrocks from the tops of
the four walls had crashed through the upper ceiling and smashed Mama's
sewing machine against the wall. Spools of colored thread bobbed around on
top of the water like barrels and cables on the ocean.
''It didn't miss anything." Grandma looked the room over. ''I know an
Indian, Billy Bear, that swears a cyclone stole his best work horse while he
was plowing his field. He walked home mad and swearing at the world. And
when he got borne, he found the cyclone had been so good as to leave the
harness, $6.50, and a gallon crock jug of whiskey on his front doorstep!"
Everybody busted out laughing, but Papa kept quiet. "Nora, I can't
stand this any longer!" he yelled out all at once. "This funny business!
This tee-heeing. This joking! Why do all of you have to turn against me like
a pack of hounds? Isn't this, this wrecked home, this home turned into a
pile of slush and filth, this home wiped out, isn't this enough to bring you
to your senses?"
"Yes," Mama was talking low and quiet, "it has brought me to my
senses."
"You don't seem to be sorry to see the place go!"
"I'm glad." Mama stood in her tracks and breathed the fresh air down
deep in her lungs. "Yes, I feel like a new baby."
"Hey, ever'body! Ever'body! C'mere!" I walked out a bare window and
stood on the ground pointing up into the air.
"What is it?" Mama was the only one to follow me out into the yard.
"What are you pointing at?"
"Mister Cyclome broke th' top outta my walnut tree!"
"That's the one you got hung up in." Mama patted me on the head. "I
think old Mister Cyclone broke the top out of that walnut tree so you won't
get hung up there any more!"
And I held onto Mama's hand, looking at her gold wedding ring, and
telling her, "Ha! I think Ïl' Mister Cyclome tore down this Ïl' mean Lon'on
House ta keep it from hurtin' my mama!"
Chapter VI
BOOMCHASERS
We picked up and moved across town to a lot better house in a nice
neighborhood on North Ninth Street, and Papa got to buying and selling all
kinds of lands and property and making good money.
People had been slinking around corners and ducking behind bushes,
whispering and talking, and running like wild to swap and trade for
land--because tests had showed that there was a whole big ocean of oil
laying under our country. And then, one day, almost out of a clear sky, it
broke. A car shot dust in the air along the Ozark Trail. A man piled out and
waved his hands up and down Main Street running for the land office. "Oil!
She's blowed 'er top! Gusher!" And then, before long--there was a black hot
fever hit our town-- and it brought with it several whole armies, each
running the streets, and each hollering, "Oil! Flipped 'er lid! Gusher!"
They found more oil around town along the river and the creek bottoms,
and oil derricks jumped up like new groves of tall timber. Thick and black
and flying with steam, in the pastures, and above the trees, and standing in
the slushy mud of the boggy rivers, and on the rocky sides of the useless
hills, oil derricks, the wood legs and braces gummed and soaked with dusty
black blood.
Pretty soon the creeks around Okemah was filled with black scum, and
the rivers flowed with it, so that it looked like a stream of
rainbow-colored gold drifting hot along the waters. The oily film looked
pretty from the river banks and from on the bridges, and I was a right young
kid, but I remember how it came in whirls and currents, and swelled up as it
slid along down the river. It reflected every color when the sun hit just
right on it, and in the hot dry weather that is called Dog Days the fumes
rose up and you could smell them for miles and miles in every direction. It
was something big and it sort of give you a good feeling. You felt like it
was bringing some work, and some trade, and some money to everybody, and
that people everywhere, even way back up in the Eastern States was using
that oil and that gas.
Oil laid tight and close on the top of the water, and the fish couldn't
get the air they needed. They died by the wagon loads along the banks. The
weeds turned gray and tan, and never growed there any more. The tender weeds
and grass went away and all that you could see for several feet around the
edge of the oily water hole was the red dirt. The tough iron weeds and the
hard woodbrush stayed longer. They were there for several years, dead, just
standing there like they was trying to hold their breath and tough it out
till the river would get pure again, and the oil would go, and things could
breathe again. But the oil didn't go. It stayed. The grass and the trees and
the tanglewood died. The wild grape vine shriveled up and its tree died, and
the farmers pulled it down.
The Negro sharecroppers went out with their bread balls and liver for
bait. You saw them setting around the banks and on the tangled drifts, in
the middle of the day, or along about sundown--great big bunches of Negro
farmers trying to get a nibble. They worked hard. But the oil had come, and
it looked like the fish had gone. It had been an even swap.
Trains whistled into our town a hundred coaches long. Men drove their
heavy wagons by the score down to pull up alongside of the cars, and skidded
the big engines, the thick-painted, new and shiny machinery, and some old
and rusty machines from other oil fields. They unloaded the railroad cars,
and loaded and tugged a blue jillion different kinds of funny-looking
gadgets out into the fields. And then it seemed like all on one day, the
solid-tired trucks come into the country, making such a roar that it made
your back teeth rattle. Everybody was holding down one awful hard job and
two or three ordinary ones.
People told jokes:
Birds flew into town by the big long clouds, lasting two or three hours
at a time, because it was rumored around up in the sky that you could wallow
in the dust of the oiled roads and it would kill all kinds of flees and body
lice.
Dogs cured their mange, or else got it worse. Oil on their hair made
them hotter in hot weather and colder in cold weather.
Ants dug their holes deeper, but wouldn't talk any secrets about the
oil formation under the ground.
Snakes and lizards complained that wiggling through so many oil pools
made the hot sun blister their backs worse. But on the other hand they could
slide on their belly through the grass a lot easier. So it come out about
even.
Oil was more than gold ever was or ever will be, because you can't make
any hair salve or perfume, TNT, or roofing material or drive a car with just
gold. You ÓÁÐ`t pipe that gold back East and run them big factories, either.
The religion of the oil field, guys said, was to get all you can, and
spend all you can as quick as you can, and then end up in the can.
I'd go down to the yards and climb around over the cars loaded down
with more tools. And the sun was peppering down on all of the steel so hot,
it kept me prancing along the loads like a football player running. I heard
the tough men cuss and swear and learned more good cuss words to use to get
work done.
My head was full of pictures like a movie--different from movies I'd
been sneaking into. The faked ones about outlaws, rich girls, playboys,
cowboys and Indians, and shooting scrapes, killings, and a pretty man
kissing a pretty girl on a pretty spot on a pretty day. It takes a lot more
guts, I thought, to work and heave and cuss and sweat and laugh and talk
like the oil field workers. Every man gritted every tooth in his head, and
stretched every muscle in his whole body--not trying to get rich or rare
back and loaf, because I'd hear one beller out, "Okay, you dam guys, hit 'er
up, or else git down out of a workin' man's way, an' let me put in a Goddam
oil field!"
A block and tackle man showed me how to lift all kinds of heavy stuff
with the double pulleys, "Ride 'em down! Grab 'em down! When th'
chain goes 'round, somethin's leavin' th' ground!" There was a twenty-foot
slush bucket used for getting mud and slush out of the hole, and it looked
so heavy in a railroad car that you never could lift it out; but you'd hear
a man on a handle of a crank yell out, 'Tong bucker, tong bucker! Mister
hooker man! Grab a root, boy! Grab a root!" The man on the hooks would yell
back, "Gimme slack! Gimme slack!" Some of the cable men would guide the big
hook over to the hooker man and yell out, "Give 'im slack! Give 'im slack!"
"Take it back! Take it back! Won't do one thing you don't like!" "Take yer
slack! Bring it back!" "Ridin' with ya! Got yer grab!" "Got my grab!" "Grab
a root an' growl! Grab a root an' growl!" "Take yore grab! Take 'er home!"
The men took in all of the slack on the chain or cable and it would get as
tight as a fiddle string, and the joint of bailing bucket would raise up off
of the floor of the car and one man would yell, "She was a good gal, but she
lost her footin'!"
I piled on top a wagon every day and set on a gunny sack stuck full of
hay, by the side of a teamskinner that told me all kinds of tales and yarns
about the other ten dozen oil fields he, personally, had put down. I picked
up five or ten books full of the cuss words the mule drivers use to talk to
each other, which are somewhat worse than the ones they use to cuss their
teams into pulling harder.
Out in the fields, I walked from derrick to derrick through the trees,
and hung around each place till the driller or the tool dresser would spot
me and yell, "Git th' hell outta here, son! Too dangerous!" The bull wheels
spun and the cable unrolled as they dropped the mud buckets down into the
hole; the boiler shot steam and danced on its foundation; the derrick shook
and trembled, and strained every nail and every joint when the mud bucket,
full again, would stick in the bottom of the hole, and the cable would pull
as tight as it possibly could, trying to pull the bucket out. The rig and
derrick would creak and crack, and whole swarms of men would work like ants.
The slush ponds were full of the gray-looking shale and a film of slick oil
reflected the clouds and the sky, and lots of times I'd take a stick and
reach out and fish out some kind of a bird that had mistook the oil pool for
the real sky, and flew into the slush. The whole country was alive with men
working, men running, men sweating, and signs everywhere saying: Men Wanted.
I felt good to think that some day I'd grow up and be a man wanted; but I
was a kid--and I had to go around asking the men for a job; and then hear
them say, "Git th' hell outta here! Too dangerous!"
The first people to hit town was the rig builders, cement men,
carpenters, teamskinners, wild tribes of horse traders and gypsy wagons
loaded full, and wheels breaking down; crooked gamblers, pimps, whores, dope
fiends, and peddlers, stray musicians and street singers, preachers cussing
about love and begging for tips on the street comers, Indians in duty loud
clothes chanting along the sidewalks with their kids crawling and playing in
the filth and grime underfoot. People elbowed up and down the streets like a
flood on the Canadian, and us kids would run and jump right in big middle of
the crowds, and let them just sort of push us along a block or so, and play
like we was floating down stream. Thousands of folks come to town to work,
eat, sleep, celebrate, pray, cry, sing, talk, argue, and fight with the old
settlers.
And this was a pretty mixed-up mess, but it was always three or four
times worse on election day. I used to follow the different speakers around
and see who got beat up for voting for who. I would stay out late at night
to see the election returns come in, and see them count the votes. Lots of
kids stayed out that night. They knew that it wasn't any too safe down on
the streets on account of the men fighting and throwing bottles and
stuff--so we would climb up the cast-iron sewer pipes, up to the tops of
buildings, and we'd watch the votes counted from up there.
A board was all lit up, and the different names of the men that was
running for office was painted on it. One column would be, say, "Frank Smith
for Sheriff," and the next, "John Wilkes." One column would say, "Fist
Fights," and another column would read, "Gangfights." A man would come out
every hour during the night and write: "Precinct Number Two, for Sheriff,
Frank Smith, three votes, Johnny Wilkes, four. Fist fights four. Gangfights,
none."
In another hour he'd come out with his rag and chalk, and write,
"Precinct Number Three just heard from. For Sheriff, Frank Smith, Seven
votes, John Wilkes, Nine; Fist fights: Four. Gangfights, Three." Wilkes won
the Sheriff's office by eleven odd votes. The fights added up: Fist Fights,
Thirteen. Gangfights, Five.
I remember one particular gangfight. The men had banged into one
another and was really going at it. They spent as much time getting up and
down as they had working on their pieces of land for the past three months.
Some swung, missed, and fell. They each brought down two more. Others got
knocked down and only brung down one or so. Others just naturally went down
and stayed down. I got interested in one big old boy from out around Sand
Creek; he was in there for all it was worth, and I wanted to crawl down off
of the building and ooze in a little closer to where he was standing
fighting. I edged through the crowd with fists of all sorts and sizes going
past my head, barely missing, and I got right up
behind him. He took pretty good aim at a cotton farmer from Slick City,
drawed back with his fist, hit me under the chin with his elbow, hit the
cotton farmer from Slick City, on the chin with his fist, knocked me a
double handspring backwards one direction, and the cotton farmer from Slick
City a twin loop the other.
I was down on my hands and knees, and all of the well-known feet in
that county was in the small of my back. Men fell over me, and got mad at me
for tripping them. Every time I started to get up, they would all push in my
direction, and down I'd go again. My head was in the dirt. I had mud in my
teeth, oil in my hair, and water on the brain.
Right after the oil boom got under way, I found me a job walking the
streets and selling newspapers. I stuck my head into every door, not so much
to sell a paper, but to just try to figure out where in the devil so many
loud-yelling people had struck from. The tough kids, one or two of them new
in town, had glommed onto the very best-selling corners, and so I walked
from building to building, because I knew most of the landlords and the
other kids didn't.
Our Main Street was about eight blocks long. And Saturday was the day
that all of the farmers come to town to jump in with the several thousand
rambling, gambling oil field chasers. Folks called them boom chasers. A
great big rolling army of hard-hitting men and their hard-hitting families.
Stores throwed their keys away and stayed open twenty-four hours a day. When
one army jumped out of bed another army jumped in. When one army marched out
of a cafe, another one marched in. As fast as one army went broke at the
slot machines in the girly houses, it was pushed out and another army pushed
in.
I walked into a pool hall and poker room that had big pictures of naked
women hung along the walls. Every table was going with from two to six men
yelling, jumping up and down, whooping around worse than wild Indians,
cussing the jinx and praying to the god of good luck. Cue balls jumped
tables and shot like cannon balls across the hall. Eight tables in line and
a whole pow-wow and war dance going on around each table. "Watch out fer yer
Goddam elbow, there, brother!"
Poker tables wheeling and dealing. Five or six little oilcloth tables,
five or six mulers, hustlers, lead men, standing around winking and making
signs in back of every table. And behind them, five or six more hard-working
onlookers, laughing and watching five or six of the boys with a new paysack
getting the screws and trimmings put to them. A guy or two slamming in and
out through the back door, picking pints of rotgut liquor out of trash
piles, and sliding them out of their shirts to the boys losing their money
around the tables. "Whitey's gettin' perty well stewed. Gonna bet wild here
in a minute, an' lose his hat."
Along the sides of the walls was mostly where the old and the sick
would come to set for a few hours and keep track of the robbing and the
fights; the old bleary-eyed bar-flies and drunks that rattled in the lungs
with asthma and ô÷ and coughed corruption all day and seldom hit a cuspidor
on the floor, I walked around saying, "Paper, mister? Five cents." But kids
like me wasn't allowed on the inside of dives like this, unless we knew the
boss, and then the bouncer kept his eye peeled on me and seen to it that I
kept moving.
"Boys! That gal there on th' Goddam wall has got breasts like a feather
pillow! Nipples like a little red cherry! Th' day I run onto somethin' like
that, I'm gonna give up my good Ïl' ruff an' rowdy ways! Whoooeee!" "Ya dam
sex-minded roustabout, you, c'mon, it's yore next shot!"
I very seldom sold a paper in the joints like this. The men were too
wild. Too worked up. Too hot under the collar to read a paper and think
about it. The old dice, the cards, the dominoes, the steer men for the pimps
and gamblers, the drinking and climbing the old spitty steps that lead to
the girly houses, maybe the wild spinning of all of these things had the men
whipped up to a fever heat, jumpy, jittery, wild and reckless. A two-hundred
pounder would raise up from a poker table broke, and stumble through the
crowd yelling, "You think I'm down! You think you got me down! You think I'm
drunk! Well, maybe I am drunk. Maybe I am drunk. But I'll tell you low-life
cheating rats one thing for sure! You never did hit an honest days work in
your whole life. You follow the boom towns around! I've seen you! Seen your
faces in a thousand towns. Cards. Dice. Dominoes. Snooker. Pool. Flabbery
ass whores. Rollers. I'm an honest hard-working man! I help put up every oil
field from Wheeler Ridge to Smackover! What the hell have you done? Rob.
Roll, Steal. Beat. Kill. Your kind is coming to a bad end! Do you hear me?
All of you! Listen!"
"Little too much noise there, buddy," a copy would walk up and take the
man by the arm. "Walk along with me till you cool off."
In front of the picture show a handful of old batty electric lights hit
down on a couple of hundred men, women and kids, everybody blocking the
sidewalks, pushing, talking, arguing, and trying to read what was on at the
show. Wax dummies in steel cages showed "The Cruel And Terrible Facts Of The
Two Most Famous Outlaws In The History Of The Human Race, Billy The Kid, and
Jesse James. And Also The Doomed Life Of The Most Famous Lady Outlaw Of All
Time, The One And Only Belle Starr. See Why Crime Does Not Pay On Our
Screen. Today. Adults Fifty Cents. Children Ten Cents. Please Do Not Spit On
The Floor. To Do So May Spread Disease.''
I sauntered along singing out, "Read all about it! Late night paper.
Ten men drowned in a dust storm!"
"Can't read, sonny, sorry, I've got horseshoe nails in my eyes! Ha! Ha!
Ha!" A whole circle of men would bust out laughing at me. And another one
would smile at me and pat me on the head and say, "Here, Sonny Boy. You
ain't nobody's fool. I cain't read yer paper, neither, but here's a dime."
I watched the crowds sweat and mop their faces walking along, the young
boys and girls all dressed up in shirts and dresses as clean as the morning
sky.
"The day of th' comin' of th' Lord is near! Jesus Christ of Nazareth
will come down out of the clouds in all of His purity, all of His glory, and
all of His power! Are you ready, brother and sister? Are you saved and
sanctified and baptized in the spirit of the Holy Ghost? Are your garments
spotless? Is your soul as white as the drifted snow?"
I leaned back against the bank window and listened to the people talk
as they walked along. "Is your snow spotless?" "Souls saved. Two bits a
lick." "I ain't wantin' t' be saved if it makes ye stand around th' street
corners an' rave like a dam maniac!" "Yes, I'm goin' to join th' church one
of these days before I die." "Me too, but I wanta have some fun an' live
first!"
I walked across the street in the dark in front of the drugstore and
found a drunk man coming out. "Hey, mister, wanta good job?"
"Yeah. Where'sh a job at?"
"Sellin' papers. Make a lotta money."
"How'sh it done?"
"You gimme a nickel apiece fer these twenty papers. You walk up an'
down th' streets yellin' about th' headlines. Then you sell all of th'
papers, see, an' you git yer money all back."
"Ish that th' truth? Here'sh a doller. Gimme th' papersh. Shay. What
doesh th' headlines shay?"
'' 'Corn liquor found to be good medicine!' "
"Corn likker ish found t' be good medishin."
"Yeah. Got that?"
"Yesh. But, hell fire, shonny, if I wash t' holler that, th'
bootleggersh would kill me."
"Why would they kill ya?"
"Cause. Jusht would. Ever'body'd quit drinkin' 'fore mornin'!"
"Just holler, 'Paper! Latest tissue!'"
" 'Latest tissue!' Okay! Here I go! Mucha 'blige.'' And he walked off
down the street yelling, "Papersh! Latest tissue!"
I spent sixty cents for twenty more papers at the drugstore. "Listen,"
the paper man was telling me, "th' sheriff is gettin' mighty sore at you.
Every night there's three or four drunks walkin' up and down th' streets
with about twenty papers yelling out some goofy headline!"
"Business is business."
I hopped up on top of a big high load of oil-field pipe and rode along
listening to the teamskinner rave and cuss. He didn't even know I was on his
load. I looked up the street and seen twenty other wagons oozing along in
the dark with men cracking their twenty-foot leather reins like shotguns in
the night, knocking blisters on the hips of their tired horses. Cars,
buggies and wagons full of people waiting their chance to pull out between
the big wagons loaded down with machinery.
So this is my old Okemah. All of this fast pushing and loud talking and
cussing. Yonder's twenty men piling onto the bed of a big truck waving their
gloves and lunch pails in the air and yelling, "Trot out yer oil field that
needs buildin'!" "See ya later, wimmen, when I git my bank roll!" "You be
careful out there on that night shift in that timber!" a woman called out at
her man. "I'll take care of myself!" Men riding along by the truckloads.
Pounding each other on the backs, swaying and talking so fast and so loud
you could hear them for a mile and a quarter.
I like all of this crowd running and working and making a racket. Old
Okemah is getting built up. Yonder's a crowd around a fist fight in front of
the pawnshop. Papa beat a man up there at that cafe last night for charging
him ninety cents for a forty-cent steak.
I never did think I'd see no such a mob on the streets of this town.
The whole air is just sort of full of a roar and a buzz and a feeling that
runs up and down your back and makes the roots of your hair tingle. Like
electricity of some kind.
Yonder is the bus caller. "It's a fine ride in a fine roller! Th'
quickest, easiest, most comfortable way to the fields! Get your bus tickets
here to all points! Sand Springs. Slick City. Oilton. Bow Legs. Coyote Hill.
Cromwell. Bearden. A big easy ride with a whiskey driver!"
"You write 'em up! An' sign 'em up! Best wages paid!
Hey, men! It's men wanted here! Skilled and unskilled! Killed and
unkilled! Brain jobs! Desk jobs! Settin'-down jobs! Jobs standing up! Jobs
bending over! Jobs for the drunk men, jobs for the sober! Oil field workers
wanted! You sign a card and hit it hard! Pay and a half for overtime! Double
on Sunday! Right here! Fifteen thousand men wanted! Roughnecks! Roustabouts!
Tong buckers! Boiler men! Dirt movers! Horse and mule drivers! Let's go!
Men! Work cards right here!"
There was old Riley the auctioneer standing in front of his hiring
office, pointing in at the door with a walking cane. Gangs of men pushing in
and out, signing up for field work. "Rig builders! It's carpenters! We need
your manly strength, your broad shoulders, and your big broad smiles, men,
to get this oil field built! Anything from nail drivers, screw drivers,
truck drivers, to slave drivers! Wimmen! Drive your husbands here! Yes,
madame, we'll sober him up, wash him up, clean him up, feed him up, fill him
up, rest him up, build him up, and straighten him up! You'll have a big fat
bank roll and a new man when we send him back off of this job! Write your
name and win your fame! Men wanted!"
An old timer