Up Jumps the Devil

30

« ^ Mean time they have abundance, nay affluence, and enjoy independence, which, we all know, is a great sweetener of life and every blessing, and makes up for many superfluous refinements in what is called polite society...“Scotus Americanus,” 1773

The phone kept ringing Saturday morning as half my family called to exclaim or condole about my close brush with danger, Pete’s arrest, Adam’s safe return. If I’d planned to sleep in, I could just forget it.

I had a bruise the size of Rhode Island on my hip and it was tender, but I seemed to be able to walk okay.

By ten o’clock, I had stuck the blue paper plates and napkins and the ten pounds of roasted peanuts in the trunk of my car and was driving over to Andrew’s house. Dinner was to be at the homeplace at two o’clock, but Daddy had suggested that my brothers and I might want to come out early and watch some of his new puppies go through their paces in the training pen at Andrew’s.

The temperature had dropped thirty degrees during the night and was barely expected to hit forty. Despite the sun, there was a stiff wind out of the north. Not a good day to stand around outside, but something in Seth’s tone when he called to relay Daddy’s message made me think I ought to be there. So I put on wool socks, boots, and a white turtle-neck sweater under a sapphire blue warm-up suit that looked like crushed silk. My silver earrings were set with small blue topazes. I felt festive, yet I was still casual enough for the jeans and flannel shirts and sweaters my brothers would be wearing. For safe measure, I took along gloves and a blue-gray wool car coat that had a hood in case I got chilly.

Andrew’s land is next to Seth’s. The house is a comfortable old white clapboard built in the twenties by one of April’s uncles over in Makely. When a new supermarket bought the lot, her cousin said April and Andrew could have it as a wedding present if they wanted to move it. It’s been much remodeled since then—April rearranges walls the way some women rearrange furniture—and the kitchen is huge and modern now.

And smelled like Thanksgiving when I stuck my head in the back door. Isabel was bringing a ham and Nadine and Minnie were each roasting a turkey, but April always makes her succulent smoked oyster dressing and she was just putting the big pans in the oven, enough for fifty people.

April is Andrew’s second wife and considerably younger than he, closer to my age, in fact, than his. She got her BA. after A.K. was born and teaches sixth grade at Cotton Grove’s middle school.

“Need any help?” I asked.

“Oh, Deborah!” She rushed over to hug me. “You could have been killed. Pete Grimes.” She shook her head. “Have you heard how Merrilee’s taking it?”

“I think she’s retained Zack Young, but when Dwight called me last night, he said he’s pretty sure they’ll find that Dick Sutterly was killed with a bullet from Pete’s gun.”

“Thank goodness he didn’t shoot you.”

I looked around the kitchen. “You sure there’s nothing I can do?”

“No, everything’s done except I may mix up a little crabapple relish. And maybe make another gallon of tea. If you want coffee, here’s a mug. They’ve got the pot plugged in down at the dog pen.”

“Holler if you change your mind about needing help,” I told her and went on down the slope where at least six pickups were parked, half with dog cages in the back.

Bert, Robert’s four-year-old grandson, came running to meet me holding a beagle pup so young it didn’t yet have its eyes open.

“Better bring him on back, little man,” called Robert. “His mama’s getting worried.”

I swung Bert and the puppy both up in my arms. “I haven’t had any sugar all week,” I said, kissing him under his chin till he was giggling all over.

Haywood’s granddaughter Kim is three and she wanted me to pick her up, too, so she could tell me all about a new litter of piglets that Seth’s Jessica had taken her to see that morning.

Jess and A.K. and Adam’s twin, Zach, were inside the quarter-acre training pen distributing fresh branches over the logs and pipes so the rabbits would have enough bolt spaces, and they all had plenty to say about my close call. As did Daddy when I saw him. The younger children were racing up and down along the outside perimeter with Blue and Ladybelle and a couple of other pet dogs, squealing with excitement and waiting for the fun to begin.

Reese and Annie Sue drove up and the kidding started before he even got out of her car good.

“Hey, Reese,” Zach called. “Heard you got hold of a deer yesterday.”

“Naw,” said A.K. “I heard it was the other way ’round.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Reese. “Y’all have fun. Get it out of your system.”

“Let me buy you a cup of coffee,” I said, taking pity on his bruised and stitched face.

“Hell, from what I hear, I ought to be buying you one.” He looked me up and down. “Gotta say though, you’re looking pretty good this morning for an old lady that spent time scrunched up in a wrecked car.”

“Old lady?”

He ducked my punch and slipped through the door ahead of me.

The boys got together a few years ago and salvaged enough building scraps to put up a one-room shack right beside the training yard, complete with a big picture window, a small potbellied woodstove, and several cast-off chairs, including an old rump-sprung recliner that Isabel was going to make Haywood take to the dump. Now Daddy can sit out there with them and watch the training sessions even when it’s cold and rainy.

The fire was welcome today, and so was the coffee Haywood poured for Reese and me. Adam was sitting in there with a mug between his hands, looking like something the dogs had dragged around in the mud.

I grinned. “Best man, huh?”

“Don’t say it,” he groaned.

Reese laughed and went outside.

As I stood watching through the picture window, Haywood said in the lowest, most confidential tone he could muster, “Uh, say, Adam? Me’n Isabel, we was wondering if you could use this?”

There was a rustle of paper, then Adam said, “Huh? Ten thousand dollars? What’s this for?”

Haywood’s whisper was like everybody else’s normal level and I heard the awkwardness in his voice. “Well, I knowed you was worried about something and if it’s just money, well, shootfire! I got lucky Thursday. You can pay me back when it’s convenient.”

I didn’t wait to hear Adam’s reply. My eyes were stinging as I took my coffee out into the crisp morning air. We might be going to have a real winter after all.

“Cold weather feels good, don’t it, shug?” asked Daddy. He’d already asked me twice was I sure Pete hadn’t seriously hurt me? Once again, I promised him that I was just fine. He had on a fleece-lined brown jacket and the beige felt Stetson that he wears in winter, and he was watching Andrew buckle a training collar around the neck of a pup he’d paid twelve hundred for.

Some people think an electronic training collar is a cruel device and I suppose it is if wrongly used. On the other hand, if you’re out in the woods and your dogs won’t come when you call or whistle, they can follow a rabbit trail halfway across the county and wind up footsore and lost. It’s sad to see a couple of slab-sided hunting dogs wandering the back roads in winter. They give you such a hopeful look when your car passes, as if wondering if this car, this time, will finally hold their owner. Yet if you stop to try and read their tags, they skitter away and often can’t be caught.

Daddy and my brothers believe a few mild electric shocks are worth preventing that.

This little dog had already caught the whiff of rabbits and was wiggling with anticipation. Daddy led her inside, got her settled, then gave the command to seek. She found the scent immediately and started yipping and singing. The other dogs in the cages started barking, too. Rabbits were zinging every which way, and the grandbabies were tumbling all over each other, laughing and pointing as a rabbit sailed right over the young dog’s head.

Daddy let her run till she was almost tired enough to stop on her own, then gave a sharp call. When she didn’t break off the chase, he gave her a quick zap at the same split second that he called again. She yelped once and instantly went to him for praise and petting.

He repeated the drill twice more and by the third try, she broke off the chase as soon as he called out to her the first time.

“She’s gonna be a good’un,” Daddy said, pleased. He rubbed her ears and praised her some more before A.K. carried her back to her box in Daddy’s pickup.

The process was repeated with three more dogs, then Andrew decided one of his rabbit dogs needed reinforcement about ignoring deer scents.

“Where’s that piece of deerskin?” he called.

“You don’t need it, Uncle Andrew,” said Jessica. “Just turn Reese in and let him run around the pen.”

Reese rolled his eyes at me. “I’m gonna hear about that damn buck till the day I die, ain’t I?”

“Till the day I die, at least,” I promised, squeezing his shoulder.

Eventually, four or five young littermates were put in the pen to get used to the smell of rabbits. Supervision of the little kids was turned over to some of the nieces and nephews as we joined Daddy inside the shack.

It was a bit crowded: Robert, Andrew, Haywood, Seth, Will, Adam, Zach and me. Young Bert was perched sleepily on Daddy’s lap.

“You want me to take him out?” asked Jessica.

“No, let him stay. You can stay, too, if you keep what’s said here in the family.”

Jess nodded solemnly and sat down on the arm of Seth’s chair.

Daddy looked around the small room. “Who’s missing?”

“Herman,” said Haywood, “and I reckon I can tell him what happens.”

“I wish Frank and Benjamin and Jack was here, too,” said Daddy, “but they ain’t.”

His eyes traveled around and met each of ours in turn. “Now, y’all know how things been changing around here. What some of y’all don’t know is that G. Hooks Talbert’s planning to develop all that land across the creek. He’s bought out Leo Pleasant, he’s bought Adam’s—”

There was some surprised and resentful muttering at that bit of news, but Daddy sailed on.

“—and he’ll probably buy Jap Stancil’s land once the title’s clear on who owns it. Best we can find out, he wants to dredge out the creek, build a lake and put up lots of big fancy houses for rich people.”

I was not the only one who sighed.

“I know, I know,” he said. “I don’t like it neither. But Talbert’s set on doing this. Best we can hope for is a chance to help make it into something we can live with.”

Lulled by the rumble of his great-grandfather’s voice, little Bert lay back against Daddy’s chest and fell asleep.

“Now, nothing’s gonna happen till after Cherry Lou’s trial, so we got us a little time to talk about what we want to let’s do.”

“Seems to me like Adam went ahead and decided all by hisself,” said Robert. “He ain’t got nothing more to sell, have you, Adam?”

Before Adam could answer, Daddy said, “No, not right now, he ain’t, but he will when I’m gone, when what’s mine gets split up equal between all of y’all.”

There was an uncomfortable stirring. The boys don’t like to think of that day any more than I do.

“Besides,” said Daddy, looking at Robert, “he didn’t decide all by hisself. He asked my advice and his need was great and I didn’t see as it’d make any difference in the long run.”

Andrew and Haywood snorted at the idea of Adam being in need. I knew what was running through their heads—a million-dollar house in California, swimming pool, kids in private schools?

Adam took a deep breath and finally swallowed his pride. “You guys think I’m loaded, right? Sorry. I got downsized in February,” he said in a tone that dared them to offer sympathy. “No golden parachute, no job, no income. Dick Sutterly was fronting for G. Hooks Talbert and they wanted my three acres so badly that they gave me sixty thousand for it.”

“Sixty thousand!” Will was incredulous.

Each of us owns outright between a hundred and two hundred acres and I could almost hear my brothers mentally multiplying their own land by twenty thousand an acre even though it was unlikely Talbert would be offering that much on land that was less strategic.

Adam’s chin came up defiantly. “I needed the money and I took it.”

“That’s how we know for sure that Talbert’s serious about developing that whole section,” said Seth.

“Maybe we ought to’ve talked it over with all of y’all first,” said Daddy, “but it won’t gonna change Adam’s need.”

Haywood was distressed. “How come you didn’t say nothing, son? We’d’ve helped your ox out of any hole you was in. Right, boys?”

“That’s what family’s for,” Robert said gruffly.

Before everybody got so uncomfortable that we all wound up in one of those sloppy group hugs, I said, “You talk like we have options, Daddy. G. Hooks doesn’t give a d—”

Daddy cut his eyes at me. He does not like to hear a lady use strong language and he particularly doesn’t like it used around small children, even if the small child in question is sound asleep.

“—doesn’t give a darn whether we can live with his plans or not. In fact, he probably hopes we’ll hate it enough to sell out.”

“Well, that’s one of our options, ain’t it, shug?” he said mildly. “If any y’all want to quit farming and cash out, sell to G. Hooks, I’m saying right now, far as I’m concerned, you can do it and I won’t say a word. You boys, ’specially you older boys, helped work this land out—I wouldn’t have half what I’ve got without y’all working hard back then, even before Annie Ruth died.”

By all accounts, Daddy’s first wife had been a harder worker than even he himself and she had imbued her sons with that ethic. Haywood and Robert and Andrew seemed shocked at the very idea of breaking up the farm, but Will and Zach, my mother’s sons, had speculative looks in their eyes.

I was really, really hating this.

“You said we had options,” I said hotly. “That doesn’t sound like much of one to me.”

Daddy smiled like the crafty old fox he is.

“What?” I said, feeling a small shaft of hope.

“Well, now, G. Hooks thinks he owns the south side of the creek,” said Daddy. “He don’t. We do. When I was buying from the Pleasant children and grandchildren all those years ago, I always bought both sides of the creek. G. Hooks’ deed may say something like ‘thence in common with the Keziah Knott line along Possum Creek,’ but mine says ‘to and including the south bank of Possum Creek.’”

“You mean we can keep him off the creek?” asked Andrew. “Stop him from dredging out a fancy lake?”

“We could. But if we get horsey with him, he’s liable to forget about fancy and go for common. If he fills that piece with the kind of crackerboxes like Dick Sutterly built over on Forty-Eight, we could have hundreds of young’uns swarming over the creek anyhow. No, I was thinking maybe we tell him we can work with him, but then he has to maybe do some things like we want.”

The sound level went up as my brothers all started talking at once. “Well, I ain’t selling!”

“Me neither!”

“Talbert’n go to hell ’fore he gets—”

“—put up barbed wire and fence the whole creek—”

“Twenty thousand a acre? You know how much that comes to?”

“I’ve been thinking,” said Seth, and the others gradually quit talking.

Seth stands halfway between us and not just in age. He hasn’t had as much formal education as Adam and Zach and I, but he reads and ponders and keeps his mind more open than some of the older ones. He respects where they’re coming from, though, and he’s always been a conciliator. The boys listen to Seth. I do, too.

“In exchange for access to the creek, maybe we can get G. Hooks to agree to a buffer zone, so we don’t have to see and hear everything over there,” he said. “If we agree to lay back a few hundred feet on this side of the creek, and he lays back the same distance—”

“A greenbelt?” I asked.

“Huh?” said Robert.

“Like a park or a wilderness area,” I said. “Instead of building right up to the creek, make him leave a wide strip of trees and bushes where people can walk or ride bicycles or have picnics.”

It was just like down at the coast. I might not like to see our homeplace changing, but Daddy was right. Best we could hope for was to have a say in how it changed.

“Something like that could increase the value of land over here,” said Adam. “If Talbert does a good job over there—”

“Yeah,” said Will. “And no reason to say we couldn’t form a development company ourselves someday.”

The older boys were looking hostile again and Jess touched Seth’s sleeve. “I don’t want to give up Silver Dollar, Daddy.”

“Nobody’s asking you to give up your horse or anything else,” Seth said. “We’ve got plenty of time, plenty of land. We’re just talking out loud right now.”

Annie Sue opened the door and a blast of cold November air swept across the room. “Aunt April says tell y’all it’s almost two o’clock and everybody’s started coming in over at the homeplace.”

The mention of food, and a Thanksgiving feast at that, eased the tension that had built up in this room.

“Well, y’all think on it,” Daddy said, as we stirred to go.

He looked down at his great-grandson asleep on his chest. What we were talking about would affect the rest of little Bert’s life. Years from now, when he was an old, old man, would he and his cousins remember this day? And would they bless it or curse it?

Daddy touched that smooth cheek with his workworn finger.

“Y’all just think on it,” he said.

—«»—«»—«»—[scanned anonymously in a galaxy far far away][A 3S Release— v1, html][September 28, 2007]