The Bottoms

13

The other night, here in the home, under warm blankets with sleet slanting in hard against the window, I drifted off and awoke to the sound of a horn blaring, and though the horn had a different noise than those on the old cars, when I heard it, I awoke immediately thinking of Grandma.

I may have even called to her, for in that moment, with the sound of the horn still in my ears, and me slowly realizing the sound had come from out on the highway near the home, I was reminded of her enthusiasm. She liked her horn, and was known to honk it at the slightest reason.

I awoke thinking of her, and tears rolled down my cheeks. Not only because of her memory, but because I was even more reminded of then, and suddenly I was pulled into now, and I do not like now, for I am old. So very old. Older than she got to be. And I’m not sure a person ought to live to be too old. For when you can’t live life, you’re just burning life, sucking air and making turds.

Perhaps it’s not age, but health that matters. Live long and healthy, it doesn’t matter. But live long and unhealthy, it’s a living hell. And here I lie. Not doing well at all.

Only the past seems to matter now; only it seems to be alive; only it can support my soul.

It was about two days after our encounter with the Klan that Grandma come to live with us. She drove up in a dusty black Ford with a cracked windshield and a rabbit hung up on the front bumper. She was honking her horn like she wanted a train to move.

Women drove cars back then, but it wasn’t real popular among men folks down in the bottoms, especially if the woman was older, and therefore figured to be more dignified. Driving was considered masculine, like smoking, cussing, chewing, and fighting.

Grandma did a little of all of those. She and my grandfather had been one heck of a couple, and now that he was dead and gone, and Grandma was nearing seventy, I assumed she’d be calmer and older-looking.

But on the day she arrived, and we ran out to see who it was – Toby gimping around the edge of the house to join us – she got out of the car looking the same as always.

She was a little heavy, but really quite pretty for an older woman, tall and strong-looking. Her hair was a mixture of brown and white and she had it up in a tight bun. She wore lace-up brown men’s work shoes with a kind of sack dress that was once green but had faded to gray.

“Hey, there they are,” she said as we came out of the house. “My whole pack of heathens. Oh, my God, is that Tom?”

Tom was peeking out from behind Mother’s dress. She had only seen Grandma when she was little and had not been old enough to appreciate what a whirlwind the old lady was. “Come here to me,” Grandma said.

“I don’t wanna,” Tom said.

Grandma tossed back her head and bellowed. “Ain’t she just the cutest little rascal.”

Toby was so startled by that laugh, he started barking.

In one smooth action, Grandma reached to the ground, grabbed a dirt clod and tossed it at Toby. Most of the clod came apart before it reached him, but it made him scuttle under the porch, where he continued to bark until Daddy hushed him.

Grandma latched her eye on me now. “You, boy, come here and give me a hug.”

I went. Grandma always overwhelmed me, but there was something about her that made you feel safe and confident. She was strong. She picked me off the ground and set me down so hard on my heels my back teeth shook.

She then proceeded to hug my Dad, actually picking him up as well, then she grabbed at Mama, who feinted and said, “Now calm down, Mama. I ain’t like them boys. I can’t take all that liftin’ up.”

Grandma laughed, grabbed Mama, and gave her a wet kiss on the cheek. Grandma, contrary to the fact she chewed tobacco and smoked and drank coffee all the time, had all her own teeth and they were as white as the ivory on a piano. She said she used a frayed willow branch and baking soda to clean ’em, but I think a lot of it was just natural. I doubt she ever had a cavity. She chewed peppermints all the time for breath freshener and kept chunks of them in a paper bag in her purse.

“Honey,” she said to me, “get that rabbit out of the bumper there. Take it out back and clean it and bring it in and I’ll fix us some dinner.”

She was talking about the noon meal. Lunch was something Yankees in cities ate. We called the late meal supper.

I looked at Daddy, not knowing what to do about that rabbit. He said to Grandma, “June, ain’t that rabbit a little ripe?”

“Aw, hell no. I hit it about two or three miles down the road. Jumped right out in front of me. Probably still warm. You still like my rabbit and dumplin’s don’t you?”

“Well, yeah,” Daddy said.

“Good then,” Grandma said. “We got us a free dinner. Now shut up, Jacob. Get the rabbit, honey.”

I got it. Daddy put his arm around me. “Let’s go on out back and skin it,” he said.

Grandma put her arm around Mama’s shoulders. Tom clung to Mama’s dress, lest Grandma get her hands on her, and they all went in the house.

“That, son,” Daddy said, “is a human tornado.”

As we finished up the rabbit, which was really good-tasting, Grandma, who had been talking almost the entire time, even while eating, said, “I love and miss Grandpa, but I’m glad he’s dead.”

“Don’t say that!” Mama said.

“Was he in a lot of pain?” Daddy asked.

“No. No. Thank goodness for that. But he took to singin’ gospel songs. He’d just burst out in one from time to time, and he couldn’t carry a tune in a syrup bucket with a lid on it. It was miserable. And you couldn’t shut him up. I figured it was time for him to go just so I wouldn’t have to listen to that.”

“Mama,” my Mama said. “That’s terrible.”

“Naw, it ain’t. He didn’t have no mind to speak of, and he wouldn’t have wanted to just carry on. He was a smart man before the old age took him. I ever start talkin’ to myself, or heaven forbid sing a goddamn gospel song-”

“Mama, your language.”

“-just go on and shoot me in the head. Pass them biscuits. And, Harry, pass the gravy, and don’t put your thumb in it this time.”

We ate rabbit and sopped up gravy with big fluffy biscuits Grandma had cooked, and they were better than Mama’s. After dinner we were all too weak to go out in the fields and work, and Daddy pronounced, in honor of Grandma’s visit, except for those chores that couldn’t be put off, a day of rest. As for the barbershop, well, when he didn’t show Cecil knew what to do. It was best that way, Daddy trying to work the farm and being a constable and all.

It was a warm November day and cloudy. It and a full belly made me feel sleepy. I went out on the sleeping porch with Tom and we sat in the swing and talked.

“She reminds me of that witch in Hansel and Gretel,” Tom said.

“Naw. She’s all right. You just don’t know her. You give her some time. She’s more fun than Mama and Daddy, and she gets in trouble more than we do.”

“Really?”

“Oh yeah. When you was little we used to live with her and Grandpa. They moved off though, and Grandpa died.”

“I know that. I went to his funeral too.”

“You don’t remember that, do you?”

“I heard tell I went.”

“I remember it. It was a long ride up there and back.”

“She gonna stay?”

“Probably.”

“That means our room is her room, don’t it?”

“We can lay claim to the sleeping porch, most likely.”

I thought about that. There were a couple advantages. It was cool in the summer, and if you slid over next to the wall under Mama and Daddy’s room, you could hear them talkin’ even better than in our room.

Drawback was, in the winter it was cold as a well digger’s butt. Most likely we’d end up putting our pallets down in the kitchen then.

“Was Grandpa crazy too?”

“Might near. But he was quieter.”

“Well, I guess that’s somethin’,” Tom said. “She talks loud enough to shake dust off the ceilin’.”

Grandma come out on the sleeping porch then. She said, “Anybody for fishin’?”

Daddy had followed her out. He said, “I don’t let them go off fishin’ much. Not these days.”

Grandma looked at him as if he had spoken an obscenity even she was offended to hear. “Why not?”

“We’ve had a few problems of late,” Daddy said. Then, in a nutshell, he told her about the murders. He didn’t mention the Klan’s visit or Mose.

“They’ll be with me, Jacob. I’ll take ’em fishin’.”

“I don’t know.”

“Come on, Daddy,” Tom said. “I done forgot how to fish.”

“You can’t let somethin’ like that run their lives,” Grandma said. “I brought along my shotgun. I’ll take it with me.”

Daddy had doubts, but he said, “Don’t go off a long ways. There’s some close fishin’ holes.”

“I know where they are,” Grandma said. “Mose showed us all them holes. Is Old Mose still alive?”

“Yes,” Daddy said.

“He still live in that same shack?”

Daddy nodded. “I’d prefer you not go off that far.”

“All right then,” Grandma said. “Can they go?”

“Long as you’re with them. And stay pretty close to the house.”

Grandma put on some overalls. Me and Tom dug some worms and put them in a coffee can, got poles and fishing business together, and with Grandma toting a double-barrel twelve-gauge, we went into the woods, heading for the river.

The woods smelled sour that day, and the way the trees rose up and the sun shone down, it was like being in some kind of cathedral with light coming through stained glass. Dried pine needles crunched under our feet and colored leaves were blowing past us thick as raindrops.

I still felt full and sleepy, but the walk was starting to invigorate me. Grandma walked us down to the river and we picked a spot with a big wash in the bank and gathered up there, put worms on our hooks. We started fishing, and pretty soon, Grandma started talking.

“You remember me, Harry?”

“Yes ma’am. I remember when you moved off. I remember you good. Grandpa too.”

“Well, I’m glad to be back now.”

“I don’t remember you,” Tom said.

Grandma laughed. “I suppose you don’t.”

“I’m sorry about Grandpa,” I said.

“Me too. I couldn’t stay there near his grave though. A grave is just a grave. The man is in my heart. I love my daughter Earlene, but I had to get back to East Texas. They ain’t got no trees up there near Amarillo.”

“No trees?” Tom asked.

“They call some of ’em trees, but they’re more like bushes. And they ain’t got the rivers and the creeks like we got down here. Ain’t got the critters we got. And it’s harder to make you somethin’ to eat. Can’t grow nothin’.”

“Daddy says times are hard here,” I said.

“They’re hard all over. But here ain’t nothin’ like North Texas, and those poor people in Oklahoma and Kansas.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, Harry, they ain’t got the soil we got here to begin with. You can drop a seed in the ground here and it’ll grow… Look there, I got a bite… Damn! Took the worm off my hook. Danged fish are smarter than you think.”

Grandma pulled up the line and Tom put another worm on it.

“It was rough up there in North Texas. One day they had somethin’ growin’. Corn, cotton, peas, and such, then it got dry. Didn’t no rain come and the ground got crusty as a scab. A few clouds floated around to tease us now and then, but they wouldn’t give up water. Finally they quit jokin’ us and just went away altogether. Everything got baked. Corn yellowed on the stalks, ears shriveled up like caterpillars on a hot piece of tin. Taters rotted in the ground, or when they were dug they were like pine knots. Not fit to eat, even if you boiled them from here till next Sunday, put salt and pepper all over ’em, and beat ’em with a hammer. Cotton wouldn’t grow and the peas burned up.

“Dirt got so dry it turned like face powder. Wind come along, all blue norther and wild, picked up the dirt, made a cloud of it, and blew it around. Then there was grit in everything. ’Tween your teeth, in the crack of your butt, twixt your toes, in anything you had to eat and drink. That ole wind worked dirt out from under rocks and sucked all the goodness out of the soil, leavin’ just sand that would run through your fingers like water. Then there were the grasshoppers.”

“We got grasshoppers,” Tom said.

“ ’Course you do. But they ain’t starvin’ to death here, and they ain’t eatin’ everything green or brown that’s got some life in it. They came from all over, them hoppers. They ate what was left growin’. Ate the leaves off the bushes, ate them things they call trees up there. And they was always gettin’ in your hair. It was a mess. Then them dark clouds of dust that hung around got caught up good on the constant wind, and the sky turned black as preacher sin, ’cept for where the sun bled through like a bloody, seepin’ head. All that dirt blowed away, all the decent topsoil toted off to God knows where. Then all them folks started headin’ out to California for pickin’ jobs. Went out there in old cars and trucks as worn out as the crops and the people in ’em.”

“Pickin’?” I asked.

“Fruit and berries, Harry. Whatever they got grows out there needs pickin’. There’s Okies goin’ by the hundreds out that way. Texans too. I figure they’re just chasin’ that dirt blowed away, like chasin’ a dream. Anyway, they all went west, and I figured I’d go the other way.”

“What about Aunt Earlene?”

Grandma cast her fresh worm out into the water.

“She and her husband was dead-set for California. They done been told it’s the Promise Land, and they believe it. I figured I didn’t want to get that far from Texas. I want to die in Texas. East Texas anyway. Least I’ll be in damp ground and not some dusty hole. I like to think a worm can live in this dirt, and if it and all its friends eat me, then I at least get carried all over East Texas.”

“That’s awful, Grandma.”

She laughed. “Well, I don’t think so. I’d rather be the turds the worms leave than slow rot in dry ground. Here the earth’s held down by trees and roots and kept damp by creeks, rivers, and a high-up waterline. ’Cause of that, I wanted to be here. And I hadn’t had no real time with you and Tom. Earlene’s boys are in their teens, and they’ve got plans of their own, and I hope long as I live never to pick another ball of cotton nor another berry neither, ’less I’m just pickin’ for myself to eat.”

“I’m almost twelve.”

“What?”

“You said Aunt Earlene’s kids are in their teens. I’m almost in mine.”

“He is old,” Tom said.

“I suppose he is,” Grandma said. “But your Mama and Daddy have kept you close to the house, Harry. They ain’t made you work like Earlene’s young’ns had to work and are gonna have to work out there in that California. I think they won’t find it near as promisin’ as they think. I tried to tell ’em, but it’s their business, you know.”

“I’ll work.”

“Know you will. But you don’t need to work like them… Why ain’t you gettin’ any schoolin’?”

“School ain’t got a teacher.”

“Say it ain’t. Well, I’ve done some teachin’ from time to time. Not that my English is all that good, but it can get better when I want it to. I wasn’t so dead-set on doin’ little to nothin’ right now, I’d be your teacher. I can do that anyway. Back at the house. We can do readin’, writin’, and ’rithmatic without any ole teacher. I can teach you and Thomasina a few things.”

“We ain’t gonna start right away, are we?” Tom asked.

“Naw.”

“Lookee there, Grandma,” I said. “A big ole cottonmouth moccasin.”

A black head was poking out of the brown water, slipping close to the bank. A moccasin always made my skin crawl.

Grandma picked up the shotgun and let loose with one barrel. The moccasin’s head disappeared.

“Never could stand those nasty sonsabitches,” Grandma said.

The leaves had fallen on and all around us, almost thick as a blanket.

Tom, full of biscuits, rabbit, and gravy, warmed by the soft earth and made cozy by the blowing leaves, curled up and tried to listen for a while, but was soon fast asleep.

Grandma said, “Ain’t she precious.”

“When she’s asleep.”

“Harry, your Daddy sure didn’t want to talk about Mose much. Is there somethin’ wrong about Mose?”

“No ma’am.”

“You’re lyin’ to me, Harry. I can tell. But I bet it’s ’cause you’re doin’ it for your Daddy. That’s an understandable lie.”

I didn’t contradict her. I took a keen interest in my fishing pole.

“Your Daddy wants you to keep a secret, I figure there’s a good reason. Jacob’s a good man, if a little hot-tempered.”

“Daddy? I ain’t never seen any real temper. He’s fussed at me and Tom from time to time. And he poured water on my head once for sassin’ Mama, and we’ve got some spankin’s for stuff we done, but I ain’t never seen him really lose his temper.”

“He’s got it. I guess truth is he ain’t hot-tempered, he’s just bad-tempered. He don’t lose his temper easy, so hot ain’t right. But it’s a bad one when it goes off.”

I doubted this too, but didn’t say anything.

“Hope you don’t never see it, ’cause it’s an ugly thing. And hope you don’t have it yourself. A temper really ain’t worth nothin’. Jacob’s prideful too. In a good way mostly. But somethin’s always tamperin’ with your pride, and if you got too much of it, it ain’t pride no more. It’s prideful. Take a fall from that, it’s hard to get up. I’ve seen it. But there ain’t no better-meanin’ man than your Daddy.”

“Grandma. Do you know Red Woodrow?”

“You met him?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“He used to be one of your Mama’s suitors. She had a lot of ’em. It might be hard to figure now, lookin’ at me, but so did I in my day. But your Mama had them all on a string. Your Daddy and Red. But she met Red first, and they were pretty serious.”

“Really serious?”

“Uh huh. But Red he had ways. Just a little off center. Folks said he done mean things to animals, but I don’t know that’s true. People like to talk, especially they don’t like someone. One thing’s for sure, his home wasn’t none too good. Not just poor folks. Hell, we were all poor and are poorer now for the most part. But his Daddy whupped him, and his Mama she liked to go with the men.”

“Mama said he was raised mostly by Miss Maggie?”

“What raisin’ he got that woman done it, but he didn’t get much. She wasn’t in any position to do it, and her being colored, that didn’t give her a lot of say. Red mostly raised himself up, and it wasn’t a good raisin’ lots of the time.”

“Mama said he had two half-brothers by Miss Maggie.”

“That’s the story. I don’t know there’s anything to it.”

“When Mama met Daddy, was that when she quit seein’ Red?”

“Like I said, she had ’em both on a string. But when she met Jacob, there was sparks. Then they went on some barge ride, somethin’ your Mama wasn’t supposed to be on, by the way. I’d told her to stay home, but she run off and didn’t listen. Somehow, Red ended up in the water in a suck hole, and your Daddy saved him. After that, Red and your Daddy, who had been good friends, never did see eye to eye. And your Mama lost interest in Red. He turned kind’a rough. Or maybe the true Red just showed up. He started tattooin’ on his arm the women he’d conquered.”

“Conquered?”

“Was intimate with. You know what I mean, Harry?”

“Yes ma’am. I think so… He did it himself? The tattooin’.”

“Yep. With something sharp and some charcoal. He’d put their name and a date for when… You know. It was crude-lookin’ and a crude subject. He got so he wore his shirtsleeves rolled up so you could see who was on his arm and the date he done what he did.”

“You’d think women wouldn’t have nothin’ to do with someone like that,” I said.

“Men and women are hard to figure, Harry.”

“He wears his sleeves rolled down now, even in hot weather.”

“Good. Maybe he ain’t so proud of it now.”

“Was he like that you think ’cause he was raised hard?”

“That sure had something to do with it. But let me tell you somethin’. Your Daddy, his family, they weren’t so good neither. Jacob turned out good. So that ain’t no excuse for Red. Your Daddy’s mother died when he was eight years old. The old man never did cotton to schoolin’ much, and when the wife died, he took Jacob out of what schoolin’ he was getting and put him to work in the cotton fields. Lot of folks did that back then with their kids, and they do it now. Had to make a livin’. It was survival. But the old man took to beatin’ on your Daddy, and bad. Once your Daddy got sick in the cotton fields. Got hurt actually. Fell somehow, hit his head on a rock and blood come out of his ears. I was a young woman then, just married to your grandfather, so I heard about it. I didn’t see it, but knew some did see it, since it happened right out in front of God and everybody.

“Your Daddy had a spotted pinto pony. I remember it like it was yesterday. He rode it home, and fell off in the yard, he was so hurt. Jacob’s Daddy took a horse whip, and beat that boy like he stole somethin’, sent him running back to the fields, chasin’ him the whole way. And he made Jacob put in a day.

“Your Daddy’s Daddy married again. Or really he took to shackin’ up. The woman was Red’s mother, and Red come to live with them for a time, and they were like brothers, your Daddy and Red.

“But Red’s mother took up with some other fella about nine years later, run off with him, and left Red with the old man and Jacob. Not that she ever cared about Red for one moment. She had a couple other kids too. Girls, I think. They were by Red’s Daddy. I don’t know whatever happened to them. He also had some kids by that colored woman, Miss Maggie. Or so they say.

“Your Daddy grew real close to Red. Kind of a protector. Jacob’s Daddy was gonna beat Red over somethin’, and Jacob, who was sixteen or seventeen at the time, picked up a board and told his Daddy his beatin’ days were over. And the old man backed off.

“So, Jacob saved Red twice. Once from a beatin’, and once from drownin’. Jacob left home that day, and so did Red. Wasn’t long after that Red started seein’ your Mama, then of course your Daddy met her and things changed. They were like brothers, Red and your Daddy, and there ain’t nothin’ worse than kin or near kin fallin’ out.”

“What happened to my Grandpa? Daddy’s Daddy?”

“Somebody killed him.”

“I never heard Daddy say that.”

“What’s he say about his Daddy?”

“Nothin’.”

“Well, then you ain’t heard him say nothin’, and inside that nothin’ is this somethin’. He was murdered.”

“Who done it?”

“No one knows. He was found in his bed, his throat cut from ear to ear. He worked at the sawmill when he wasn’t drunk. He’d already lost three fingers there, and he wasn’t makin’ any real money, just scratchin’ shit with the chickens. So there wasn’t nothin’ there for anyone to rob.”

“Grandma, I thought ladies weren’t supposed to cuss.”

“They aren’t. And it ain’t nice to interrupt a story. Like I was sayin’ about your Grandpa. It’s more likely in my mind someone killed him because he was a rotten sonofabitch. That’s a harsh thing to say, Harry, but them’s the stone-cold sober facts. I figure he rode one of them coloreds out at the mill a little too hard, and the man waited until he went to bed, slipped in, and cut his throat. Wasn’t nothin’ stole no one knew about. Then again, wasn’t nothin’ in the house besides corn liquor and some crackers anyway. Whoever done it, it couldn’t have happened to a dirtier bastard than that old man. He may have been your Grandpa, Harry, but you’re lucky you didn’t never have no truck with him.”

“Daddy says when someone’s killed, people always think it’s a colored. It don’t have to be a colored killed my Grandpa, does it?”

“No. ’Course not. But I hope it was. ’Cause he deserved to die by a colored’s hand, way he treated them. Hell, he just deserved to die.”

“Grandma?”

“Yes.”

“Was Mama’s name tattooed on Red’s arm?”

“That isn’t somethin’ I’d know about, Harry.”

“Grandma, Daddy says you’ve always been good to colored. He says that ain’t like most folks. Why do you feel that way?”

“First off, I don’t know what good to colored is. I try to treat people right, but I’d be a liar I said I treated them just the same. I don’t spend that much time with them, and I ain’t got any real colored friends. I don’t know that much about the lives of the ones I do know. So all I can say is I don’t hate colored. That’s somethin’ worth sayin’, though. Let me ask you a question.”

“Okay.”

“Do you hate colored?”

“No ma’am.”

“Why don’t you?”

“I don’t know… I guess Daddy and Mama.”

“It was the same for me. Someone somewhere figured some truth out and passed it along. I got it. Your Mama got it, and now you got it. And Jacob, well, he once told me how he come by his thinkin’.”

“He told me the story,” I said.

“Did he tell you that we all, no matter what we think, slide a little backward now and then? Did he tell you somethin’ comes up missin’, and there’s a white man and a colored man standin’ nearby, most of us are gonna think it’s the colored that did it? That he’s the one shiftless? Ain’t none of us that damn good, Harry. We all got a lot of learnin’ to do.”

“But a colored man could have stole it, couldn’t he?”

“He sure could have. But it ain’t the thing to expect of him just because he is colored. You get what I’m sayin’, Harry?”

“Yes ma’am.”

We fished for a time, then Tom woke, shook off the blanket of leaves, and we moved to another place.

I was sort of worried Grandma would try to take us off to where Mose was. I could tell she was curious about what was going on there, but she fooled me. We stayed pretty close to the house, even though we changed spots two or three times, and by nightfall we had caught a dozen fish or so and Grandma had shot the head off another moccasin.

We got back to the house about supper time. I cleaned the fish, which were mostly hand-sized perch, and Grandma fried them up with hush puppies. She also made a pie with fig preserves, Mama not believing it could be done and taste right.

We ate the fish, all the while being told to watch for bones by Grandma and Mama, then we sucked down the pie, which turned out delicious. Afterward, we went out on the sleeping porch to sit or swing or lie on the floor until we had digested enough to move again.