In September Drake Eye Springs School started again, this time with a
new teacher named Mister Shepherd.
Mierd and Wiley both got new book sacks. I begged the grownups to get
me a book sack and let me go. I could say my ABC's and count all the
way to a hundred! But Mama said I wasn't old enough to start to school,
Papa said my legs weren't long enough, and Grandpa Thad said I still
had to eat a lot more baked sweet 'taters.
Shoogie couldn't come any day to play with me because she had to go to
Sweet Beulah School. Her legs were already real long. So I played by
myself. Sometimes Mama and I kept the store while Papa went to town.
That was fun to me, but Mama didn't like it.
"I wasn't cut out to be a storekeeper, Bandershanks, and I'll sure be
glad when Papa gets his shelves stocked."
"How come Papa goes and goes to town, Mama?"
"He's got to buy his winter goods before bad weather sets in. Once the
rains start, the roads get so muddy wagons bog down. But Papa will soon
be through. He's got one more haul to make—next Monday."
When Monday came, Papa and Mama got up while it was still night. They
didn't wake Mierd or Wiley or me. But when I smelled the ham Mama was
frying for Papa's breakfast, I woke anyway.
I slid out of bed and tiptoed into the kitchen.
"Bandershanks! What're you doing up? It's not even three o'clock yet."
"I'm hungry, Papa."
"Here, get one of these biscuits and go back to bed."
"Mama, can I take Trixie a biscuit?"
"Child, dogs don't want biscuits this time of night."
"Trixie's done woke up. I heard her out on the front porch, moaning
just like Mierd does when she's dreaming bad dreams."
"Well, take her this'n. Then you crawl back in bed and dream yourself
some sweet dreams, little gal!"
Just as I squatted down by Trixie to give her the biscuit, I heard
somebody shooting firecrackers—or guns—way off up the road. Trixie
jumped up. She growled and lay back down. She sniffed the biscuit but
wouldn't eat it. I heard some more loud bangs. Trixie heard them too
and started barking. Then I noticed the sky was glowing—like the sun
was coming up. It couldn't be the sun; I knew that.
I ran back to the kitchen.
"Papa, come see! It's a big, big light!"
Papa set down his coffee cup.
"Where's any light?"
"Up in the sky. And somebody's shooting firecrackers! There they go
again! Hear them?"
"Yeah!"
Papa and Mama ran with me out to the far end of the porch.
"Lord, Nannie, that's a big fire! Up about the store!"
"Looks like it's far enough away to be Doctor Elton's house, don't you
think?"
"Maybe. Whatever it is, it's burning down! I'm gonna go see!"
"I'll go with you, Jodie."
"Me too, Papa!"
"Y'all hurry, Nannie. Wake Mierd and Wiley while I hitch up the wagon.
Just let them come on in their night clothes!"
The light from the fire kept getting brighter and brighter. By the time
we had splashed across the branch and reached the next rise we could
see the huge blaze, already up higher than the trees.
Papa kept jerking on the reins, trying to make Belle and Puddin' Foot
trot faster.
"Nannie, you think it might be Hal's grist mill?"
"Yeah. Or, it could be the cotton gin. Mister Hansen's got lots of
cotton stored there."
"Cotton don't burn as fast as that fire's going. It's blazing like an
old house made out of heart pine."
Papa gave the mules another slap with the lines.
"Jodie, what if it's the church? Who was supposed to tend the heater
last night after services?"
"Wallace Goode and Wiley. Son, did y'all douse it good with water like
we've always told you to do?"
"Yes, sir. Me and Wallace drowned it slap out! Say, maybe it's the
schoolhouse, and we won't have to go to school no more!"
"Son! You oughtn't to say such a thing!"
"I didn't mean it, Papa."
We wheeled around the last big curve in the road and began climbing the
high hill between us and the fire. Just as soon as the mules could pull
our wagon to the top, we'd see what was burning up.
For a minute I wondered why nobody had said it might be Papa's store.
Then I knew. It was his store, and they all knew it.
"Papa?"
"Yeah, Bandershanks?"
"I wish it ain't your store, Papa."
"Yeah, sugar, I know. Great Jehoshaphat and gully dirt! Look at that!
Nannie, look!"
We all saw it. Not the store—it was done swallowed up. The huge blaze
shooting up was as high as stores and stores stacked on top of each
other and getting higher all the time! Wild flames, roaring and
leaping, were trying to climb to the clouds and set them on fire!
"Oh, Nannie, our lifetime of work, going up in smoke!"
The wind was blowing smoke toward us, and already we could feel the
heat. As we got closer, more and more sparks and cinders came flying in
the air.
"Jodie, yonder's a whole bunch of men!"
"Where?"
"Backed up there between the fire and the schoolhouse branch."
"Yeah, I see them now. They've been trying to put it out for us!
Nannie, it won't be safe for y'all to go any closer. I'll stop the
wagon here at the gin. Now, you young'uns stay with your mama."
"Jodie, it's too late to do a thing! Don't you go up close! All them
cartons of shotgun shells could go off."
"They've done exploded. That's what Bandershanks heard. Nannie, I've
gotta go close enough to see if I can tell how and where that low-down
fool set the fire."
"What'd you say, Papa?"
"Nothing of any consequence, son. You hitch the mules for me. Here,
hold the reins."
Papa leaped from the wagon and ran up the slope, straight toward the
fire.
"Take care, Jodie!"
"Mama, soon's I hitch the mules, lem'me go find out what it looks like
on the other side! I ain't never seen such a fire in my whole life!
I'll run way around. I won't get no closer'n we are right now."
"Lemme go too, Mama."
"If Mierd goes, can I go, Mama?"
"Now, now, children, Papa said for y'all to stay with me. I tell you
what we'll do. I'll walk with you, and we'll make our way up toward the
schoolhouse spring. But now y'all have got to keep close to me and
close to the branch."
"Hot diggity! Come on!"
"Mama?"
"What, Mierd?"
"How come the fire just keeps on and on burning so terrible?"
"For one thing, the timbers in the store are pine, heart pine, full of
fat—even the shingles on the roof. Besides, the shelves were stocked
full of Christmas goods—things that burn easy. And, there's all that
coal oil, and cloth—just everything."
"Mama, all our candy's burning up!"
"Yeah, Bandershanks. I guess it is. Don't cry, hon!"
"Hot diggity! Yonder's Wallace Goode! Mama, see Wallace standing up
there with all the men? Lemme go where he's at!"
"Just for a minute, son. Then you come straight back."
Mierd and I wanted to go see Wallace too, but Mama wouldn't let us.
Wiley came streaking back, Wallace with him.
"Mama, Wallace was one of the first ones here, and him and Mister Goode
and all of 'em poured on lots of water, but it was too far gone!"
"Yes'm, Miss Nannie. Doctor Elton, he was the first one who seen it,
and me and Papa was next. Doctor Elton woke up smelling smoke. Soon's
he run out in his yard and looked down this way, he seen 'zactly what
it was. He got on the phone and started calling. But the phone, it went
dead 'fore he could get y'all 'cause the line going past the store
melted in two!"
"Mama, you know what Mister Goode thinks?" Wiley asked. "He says
somebody set Papa's store afire. Poured on coal oil!"
"Well, son, we—"
"Doctor Elton says so too, Miss Nannie! He figures somebody built a
blaze under the porch first 'cause that porch was slam gone when we all
got here."
"Yeah, Mama, and the back west corner was already blazing sky high
too!"
"On top of that, Miss Nannie, we found rags and a soda pop bottle that
smelled just like coal oil. Papa's done give 'em to Mister Jodie! And
he's gonna take 'em straight to town and show both of 'em to the Law!"
"Come on, Wallace, let's run back up yonder where the men are at! Mama,
can I go?"
"I reckon so."
We walked up a little closer to the fire, too. The flames weren't so
high any more, but the whole hill was terribly hot. Mama said the fire
would die down and that by daylight there wouldn't be a thing left but
red-hot ashes.
"Ouch! Ouch! Oh, my foot!"
I had stepped on something.
"Mama?'
"What on earth, Bandershanks?"
"It's sticking m my heel. Oh!"
"I declare to my soul! Lemme see."
"Don't pull it out Mama! It'll hurt worser! Please! Please!"
"Mercy sakes, you've stepped on a horseshoe with two nails still in
it!"
"What'll we do, Mama?"
"Pull it out and get you home so we can soak your foot in coal oil,
that's what."
"No'm! Please don't!"
"Bandershanks, when you step on a rusty nail, you've got to get it out
and soak your foot in coal oil right away. Otherwise, you're liable to
take the lockjaw. Mierd, run see if you can find Papa. Tell him
Bandershanks hurt her foot and that I'll have to take her home. On
second thought, you stay with her, and I'll go tell him."
Mama gave the horseshoe a quick jerk.
I screeched. But not loud.
Later, while Mama had me sitting on our kitchen doorstep soaking my
foot, I got to thinking what strange stuff coal oil is. You put it in
lamps. You can stop a mean man from fighting with it. You can burn down
stores with it. You have to use it to doctor sore feet. It's funny
stuff.
In the days that came next, nobody paid me and my sore foot much
attention. Papa didn't have time. He said he had to go to town and do
lots of things.
He didn't even have time to explain to me what he meant about "a plain
case of arson," and "just circumstantial evidence that wouldn't stand
up in court," and about the Law giving him some kind of run-around. He
explained it all to Mama, though. He told her that Ward laughed in his
face, and that Doctor Elton said later that a man who drank himself
into a stupor all the time was plain sick.
One night I overheard Papa telling Mama, "This is one time I almost
wish I wasn't a deacon and that I didn't believe what the Bible says
about not paying back evil for evil."
"I know, Jodie. It's hard, but the only way to live is by the Bible.
And it teaches, 'Recompense to no man evil for evil.'"
"Nannie, I'm holding my breath for fear of what the benighted fool will
do next"
"I declare, Jodie, you're gonna wear out the soles of your boots pacing
the floor! Please sit down. He can't harm the child, or any of us—not
with us and everybody else in the settlement watching."
In a few more weeks, after Papa got the carpenters started on building
the new store, he quit pacing the floor every night.
And when the store was finished, Papa helped me draw two pictures of it
to send off in the mail to my big brothers, who just kept on staying in
the army.
Clyde wrote back that he was keeping his picture in a knapsack. Walker
wrote that he was going to take his with him all the way to France. He
didn't say when he was going or how long he might stay, and Mama almost
cried.
The very next day—right in the middle of a tea party I was having with
my doll and Mierd's old cat Nero—I heard Mama laughing and crying, all
at the same time! I hid the tea cakes from Nero and ran to see about
Mama. She was talking on the phone to Papa and whispered to me what it
was about.
I ran quick to tell Grandma Ming.
"Grandma! Grandma! Kaiser Bill ain't gonna cut off my hands! Yours
neither!" I was fairly yelling as I dashed into Grandma Ming's house
and up to the side of her bed.
"Bandershanks, baby, what in this round world are you talking about?"
"The phone ringed, and Mama was just a-laughing and a-crying and
couldn't hardly talk! I asked her, 'What's the matter?' And she said,
'The war's over!' I said, 'Is the old Kaiser coming?' And Mama said, 'O
Lord, no!'" I stopped a minute to catch my breath. "So, Grandma, Kaiser
Bill ain't coming! He ain't gonna cross the ocean to cut off little
kids' and old women's arms and legs!"
Grandma didn't say a word.
"Ain't you glad, Grandma?"
She just sat up in bed a little bit straighter and went on knitting and
knitting, and her needles went on clicking and clicking. She looked at
me over the gold rims of her eyeglasses. Then, all of a sudden, Grandma
threw down her knitting and started calling Grandpa Thad as loud as she
could holler!
"Thad! Thad! Oh, Thad!"
He didn't answer.
"Baby, run fast and find your grandpa! Tell him to make haste and
com'ere!"
I darted through the kitchen, out the back door, and was at the yard
gate when I almost ran smack into both Grandpa Thad and Mama. They were
walking so fast and talking so fast they didn't notice me.
"Ming! It's over! The war's over! They signed the Armistice!''
"Glory be!" Grandma cried, raising her arms up high and letting her
hands fall back down on the bed covers and counterpane. "Glory be! Our
boys will come home! Thank God! They'll come back! Thank God!"
Tears were running out of Grandma's eyes, and she kept waving her arms
and crying, "Glory be! Glory be!" She was shouting at first; then the
"glories" got softer and softer, till she was just whispering them.
Grandpa was trying to tell Grandma something else, but I couldn't
understand him because Mama was talking too.
"Jodie told me the Armistice means the war's ended for good! The
shooting has all been stopped! I reckon somebody must've called out to
the store from town. I just didn't think to ask how he found out. All I
could think about was our boys. I asked when they'd be coming back, and
he said, 'Soon, Nannie. Real soon, I hope!' He told me to run tell
y'all. And he was gonna phone everybody on the line. Said folks all
over the country are already celebrating and having parades and blowing
horns and ringing bells!"
"God knows it's a day to ring the bells! Eh, Ming?" Grandpa looked over
toward Grandma and me.
By this time she was lying back, half buried in the pile of cushions
and feather pillows and the long bolster she kept on her bed in the
daytime. I had crawled up on the foot of her bed and was turning her
ball of knitting yarn over and over, unrolling the thick gray thread
and then rolling it back up again. I wanted to hold the needles, but I
was afraid I'd let them slip and drop a stitch. Grandma always fussed
when I dropped her stitches.
"I should say so, Thad! It's a day to ring all bells! When the baby,
here, came running in saying something about that wicked German Kaiser,
I didn't know for a minute what to make of it. I'd clean forgot the
wild tales Dink told. My! My! I'm so glad I could shout!"
Mama sat down then in one of the high-back padded rockers and rocked a
long time, easy and slow, while she and Grandma and Grandpa told one
another all they knew about the World War and that Armistice thing
somebody had signed at exactly eleven o'clock.
Mama said the Armistice was an answer to prayer. Grandma Ming said she
was powerful proud the Germans could tell the jig was up. Grandpa said,
"Foot dool! Them German generals saw the handwriting on the wall the
day our soldiers set foot in France!"
Soon Mama got up. "Come on, Bandershanks, let's go home. We've got to
start getting ready! Walker and Clyde may be coming home before we can
get a thing done!" Mama picked me up and squeezed me. "They won't even
know you, gal! You've got so big! Pa, I'll let you and Ma know if I
hear any more from Jodie."
Mama didn't put me down till we got out to our front porch. Then she
let me slide to the top doorstep, and she sank down on the plank beside
me.
"Mama, what're we gonna do?"
"Well, tomorrow I'll send for Doanie and Bett to come sweep the yard
from front to back. They'll have to have new dogwood brush brooms. And
just before your big brothers get in, I'll have Huldie up here helping
me bake plenty of cakes and pies."
"Mama?"
"Yes?"
"When we get to Heaven, can we have cake and pie every day?"
"Why, I don't know! Maybe! It's gonna be sorta like Heaven right here
when Clyde and Walker come home. But, my, I've got work ahead. I'll
have to catch a dozen or so young pullets and roosters and coop them up
to fatten. We'll need piles of fried chicken. I hope your papa will
have Black Idd get a good-sized shoat ready to butcher so I'll have
fresh hams to boil. Or, if it would just turn cold enough, we could
have hog killing."
Mama sounded like she was talking to herself, not me, but I didn't stop
her.
"I've got a quilt in the frame that's simply got to be finished and put
away. I always did hate to see a half-finished quilt hanging up against
the ceiling. That makes me think; I'd better set up another bed in the
far side room. That floor's got to be scrubbed first, though. This
porch and all these old floors need a good going over with sand and
lye."
"Mama, what's for me to do?"
"I'll think of something." Mama looked out across the yard toward the
grove of black walnut trees in front of our house and at the ones
growing by the barns and wagon shelter. The trees were nearly naked.
They still had a handful of brown and yellow leaves flipping in the
wind, but all their walnuts were lying on the ground, their thick green
hulls already shriveling up and turning from green to black.
"I know the very thing, Bandershanks. You can pick up walnuts. We'll
make some chocolate candy with—"
"Mama, look coming! Yonder's Mierd and Wiley! What're they running
for?"
"My sakes! Mister Shepherd must've turned school out early!"
"Mama! Guess what! School's out! We're getting a holiday!'' Wiley
yelled, long before he and Mierd got to the gate. "Teacher said we
ought'a celebrate stopping the war! November 'leven's gonna be a big
day to remember! Always!"
"Yeah, Mama!" Mierd hollered. "Mister Shepherd said they'll put it in
the history book! But he assigned us so much arithmetic it ain't gonna
be no holiday a-tall! Me and Wiley'll be up till midnight!"
"Maybe not."
"Mama, I gotta run tell Grandpa the war's over! He won't have to save
no more peach seeds!"
"Son, he knows it. Your papa phoned us the news just a few minutes
ago."
"Peach seeds? What's Grandpa and peach seeds got to do with the
Armistice?"
"Good grannies, Mierd, you heard Grandpa talking 'bout saving 'em not
long ago. The Government wanted folks to all start saving up peach
seeds and nut hulls for the soldiers."
"Are you crazy, Wiley?"
"No, silly. They was gonna use seeds to get carbon for them gas
masks—that's what soldiers wear on the front line."
Mierd didn't seem very much bothered about things soldiers put over
their heads. She dumped her school books and dinner bucket on the edge
of the porch and went off to play in the yard.
Most nights, after supper, Papa sat by the fire and counted his store
money. But that night, when I got into the fireplace room, I saw his
striped money sack was still hanging over the back of his chair. Papa
was sitting there in his rocker, frowning and looking into the fire. So
I knew he was thinking about Mister Ward. Mama had told Papa a hundred
times to quit thinking of that man, but Papa said that was impossible.
Mierd and Wiley were at their study table in the corner, but they
surely weren't studying. They didn't even have their books out. Wiley
was trying to make a new slingshot out of a forked stick and an old
leather shoe tongue; all Mierd was doing was holding her cat in her
lap. Nero liked that. He was purring and purring as Mierd stroked his
slick, yellow fur. Wiley flipped his slingshot over toward Nero's tail.
"Don't you hurt Nero!"
"Mierd, your old cat sounds like a pea thrasher!"
"Nero does not sound like a pea thrasher! Do you, kitty?"
"He sounds worse!"
"Now, now," Papa told both of them. "Y'all get to your school books.
Bandershanks, you come here."
"Papa, we gonna count money?"
"No need to tonight, hon. I didn't take in much today. Folks was so
carried away over the Armistice news they didn't buy."
"Not nothing?"
"Well, your Aunt Vic did send Jim-Bo to get a sack of flour, and Old
Mister Hawk was in as usual for his plug of tobacco. Otherwise, I sold
very little today. Here, let's get your heels warmed up so you can
crawl in the bed. My goodness, this is a mighty long nightgown you've
got on tonight."
"It's a new one."
I was just crawling up on Papa's knees when Mama came in from the
kitchen.
"Bandershanks! Shoo, shoo, to bed! It's time all chickens were on the
roost!"
"I ain't no chicken, Mama!"
"Yes. You're a chicken. Mine and Papa's littlest chicken, not even
feathered out yet!"
She led me back to one of the double beds in the far end of the
fireplace room.
"I ain't sleepy, Mama."
"You don't have to go to sleep. Just lie down and rest. I aim to work
on my quilt for a few minutes while Mierd and Wiley finish their
lessons. Then we'll all get off to sleep."
"Mama, lem'me get in yours and Papa's bed."
"Not tonight." Mama turned down the covers.
"Just for a little while?"
"No, no. You're supposed to sleep with Mierd."
I climbed in while Mama was fluffing up my pillow. "Remember your
prayer."
"I will, Mama."
Papa and Mama watched the fire and talked for a long time—about a
letter from my married sister Gertie, and about Clyde and Walker
finally coming home from the war.
Papa said, "You know, Nannie, I'm in hopes Walker will stay on here at
home and plant a crop, come spring."
"Me too. It'd be a sad mistake for him and his wife to settle in town
and him take up public work."
"Yeah. Working for the other fellow's no good. Besides, town ain't a
fit place to live—folks all crowded together! A man needs room for his
own shade tree if he's to stand the heat of the day."
"Trouble is, you can't tell young folks nothing. They've got to find
out things for themselves."
Papa was quiet for a while. Then he said, "Nannie, I wasn't aiming to
tell you, but I reckon I'd better."
"What, Jodie?"
"Our friend is in business now!"
"Where you reckon he got the money?"
"Beats me. You know, he's made a batch and hauled it off in the middle
of the night."
By that, I knew Papa was telling Mama that Mister Goode or somebody had
cooked a batch of ribbon cane syrup in the nighttime instead of the
daytime. I never cared a thing about syrup, except when it was poured
on a hot biscuit or batter-cakes, so I turned my face toward the wall
and snuggled farther down under the covers.
"Ned told me, Nannie," Papa said. "That poor Negro is scared to death
of Ward! He was sitting there on my store porch, shaking, when I got
there this morning."
"What'd Ned say?"
"You remember this fellow Hicks that drove his automobile through here
a while back?"
"Yeah. That was the only automobile we saw the whole summer."
"Ned told me he came riding up on that automobile and got the whiskey
around midnight last night, and Ward went off with him."
"Did Ned actually see them?"
"They had him and his boys loading the kegs and jugs into the
automobile. This man Hicks didn't say a word to Ned, but Ward
threatened him again."
"You've been waiting for proof on the still. Now you've got it. But,
Jodie, please don't turn him in! I'm scared for you to go to the Law!"
"I won't report him—not just yet. Doctor Elton talked me into waiting.
He figures if we called the Law and they came out and busted up the
still, all the commotion of Ward getting arrested might make Ophelia
lose her baby."
"It probably would. Her time's about up, and she looks so bad-all
hollow-eyed and blotchy-faced."
"Yeah. The doctor says he's worried about her this time. Me and him
both figure Ward's just a big enough fool to get in a drunken rage and
kill Ned. So, we're gonna wait till the baby's born and Ned moves. He's
decided to start looking for another place."
"You're not thinking of taking Ned, are you, Jodie?"
"No. He's a good worker, but I'd have to build him a house, and I'm
just not in shape for that this year. I did promise him I'd speak to
Roy Taylor, down on State Line Road."
"Jodie, who all knows about Ward's still?"
"Nobody except us, Doctor Elton, and the Goodes. And we told the new
schoolteacher. He's a fine man, Nannie."
"Seems to be."
"Evidently Wes Bailey hasn't got wind of it yet. Old Man Hawk don't
know it either, or he would've done had Ward in jail."