“Horseshit. You can’t fix up that old house. We don’t even know who it belongs to. What we gonna do if whoever owns it comes up here and catches us?”
He thought about it for a minute. “Well, maybe we can find us someplace else.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. He’s sposed to know some people around here. Maybe they know of a place. A place a little closer to a store or somethin. We got to have some way to get somethin to eat. Have we got anything left?”
“I doubt it. I don’t think she’s got nothin left. I don’t know what we had to leave Texas for. At least we had a garden out there. There ain’t nothin here.” She looked around in disgust. “Back off in the woods. Poison ivy all over the place. I bet you couldn’t find nobody in his right mind would live up in here.”
“I wonder if he’s got any money,” Gary said.
“What do you think?”
“Naw.”
“You know he ain’t. If he did he’d of done found him a liquor store somewhere and spent it.”
“Well, what we gonna do?”
She just looked at him.
“I don’t know.”
By noon they had most of the trash cleaned out but they were having to stay out of the room where the wasp nest hung. They were sitting under the shade of some trees in a yard that honey-suckle vines had taken over. Like foraging cows they had trampled them down and flattened them.
“Now how much money have we got?” the old man said to them. He looked hopeful.
“I ain’t got none,” Gary said.
“Don’t look at me,” said Fay.
“Where’s your purse?” Wade asked her.
“I said I ain’t got none,” she told him. “What, you think I’m lyin?”
“I just want to check.”
“I done told you I’m broke.”
“Well, I just want to see.”
“Well, you can just jump up my ass.” She got up and started to pick up her purse, but he caught her by the arm. They fought briefly over it until he broke the strap and snatched it away from her. He upended it and dumped the contents on the ground while she cursed at him. A comb, a mirror, two sticks of gum, hair clips, lipstick. He shook it but nothing else came out.
“Now. You satisfied?” She knelt and started putting her things back in it, muttering under her breath.
“We got to have somethin to eat,” he said.
“You oughta thought of that before you got us out here.”
“You want me to slap you?” he said. She didn’t answer.
“We gonna have to do somethin,” Gary said. “Find us a job.”
“Where you gonna find one at?” the old man said.
“I don’t know. I guess I’ll have to go look for one. How far is it to town?”
The old man looked around at the woods as if the trees bore road signs that marked the route to civilization.
“It’s about ten mile, I guess.”
“Ain’t there a store no closer than that?”
“They’s one over here at London Hill. Or used to be.”
“Reckon they’d give us some credit?”
“They might. You could ask. They might give us credit.”
“Well, why don’t we walk over there and see? We got to do somethin. We can’t set around here all day.”
“You go. My legs is hurtin s’bad I can’t hardly get up.”
The old woman had not spoken but she was unfolding limp green paper in her hands. Each of them realized it gradually, turning one by one to look at her as she sat with her head down, her fingers trembling slightly as she fumbled with the wrinkled bills. She smoothed each one on her knee as she drew it from the wad.
“Where’d you find that, Mama?” Gary said.
“I had it,” she said. Her hair was coated with dust and it hung limply around the sides of her head so that her ears stuck through.
“How much you got?” the old man said. He was taking it off her knee and counting it. “Eight dollars? You got any more?” She shook her head.
He got up immediately, his leg forgotten, and put the bills in his pocket.
“I’ll go on over to the store,” he said. “See what I can buy.”
Gary got up. “Let me go with you,” he said.
“Ain’t no need for you to go. I can do it.”
“Go with him, Gary,” Fay said, nudging him.
“Just stay here. I’ll be back after while.”
“You gonna get some gas?” Gary said.
“Gas? What for?”
“For that wasp nest.”
Wade shook his head, already starting off. “I ain’t got nothin to carry it in.”
“We gonna have to rob that wasp nest before we can stay in there.”
“Well, if I find a jar to bring it back in I’ll buy some.” They stood and watched him stagger away through the hot woods. When he was out of hearing Fay turned on her mother.
“What’d you give him all that money for? He ain’t gonna do nothin but catch a ride to town and buy whiskey with it.”
“Leave her alone,” Gary said. “She don’t need you fussin at her.”
At nine that night they were gathered around a small fire in the middle of the yard, mute in the thunderous din of crickets. The grasses and weeds were beginning to look like a bedding ground. They were cooking a meal of pork and beans in opened cans, and the old man was halfway through a bottle of Old Crow. They had foraged for firewood and had a pile nearby.
The faces around the fire were pinched, the eyes a little big, a little dazed with hunger. They sat and watched the blaze burn the paper off the cans. When the beans began to sizzle, the woman stooped painfully on her bad hip and reached for the cans with a rag wrapped around her hand. Clotted strings of hair hung from her head. She took five paper plates, set them out on the ground, and dumped the beans onto them, shaking them as she went, the way a person might put out dog food for a pet. She dumped the largest portion into the plate intended for the old man.
The breadwinner was sitting crosslegged on the ravaged grass, the whiskey upright in the hole his legs formed. He was weaving a home-rolled cigarette back and forth from his lips, eyes bleary, red as fire. He was more than a little drunk. His head and chest would slump forward, then he’d jerk erect, his eyes sleepy. Grimed and furtive hands reached out for the plates quietly, took them back and drew away from the fire into darker regions of the yard. The old woman took two small bites and then rose and scraped the rest of her food into the boy’s plate.
The fire grew dimmer. The plate of beans before the old man steamed but he didn’t notice. A candlefly bored crazily in out of the night and landed in the hot sauce, struggled briefly and was still. The old man’s head went lower and lower onto his chest until the only thing they could see was the stained gray hat over the bib of his overalls. He snuffled, made some noise. His chest rose and fell. They watched him like wolves. The fire cracked and popped and white bits of ash fell away from the tree limbs burning in the coals. Sparks rose fragile and dying, orange as coon eyes in the gloom. The ash crumbled and the fading light threw darker shadows still. The old man toppled over slowly, a bit at a time like a rotten tree giving way, until the whiskey lay spilling between his legs. They watched him for a few minutes and then they got up and went to the fire and took his plate and carried it away into the dark.
A SHANNON RAVENEL BOOK
Published by
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225
a division of
Workman Publishing
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014
© 2001 by Larry Brown. All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
E-book ISBN 978-1-56512-709-8
Larry Brown, Billy Ray's Farm
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