I started to turn, but the door opened wider, and I saw then she had a big pistol in her hand. My first thought was if she pulled the trigger the firing of the gun would knock her down. She lifted it and held it at us with both hands. She held it steady, considering the size of her, and there was about her a kind of hard knowledge that changed my mind. Right then I decided she could not only shoot that pistol and not be knocked down but she could probably hit what she was aiming at.
“I ain’t got no one to chop wood,” she said. “I reckon you can chop wood.”
“We can do that,” I said, looking at the pistol.
“I wouldn’t mind servants,” she said.
She waved the pistol at us, had us come inside. The place was a wreck. Chairs was turned this way and that, a table was on its side, the legs poking out like a dead animal’s legs. There was all manner of junk in there, and it smelled kind of ripe, like old food.
“I ain’t straightened the place up lately,” she said.
Since the dawn of creation, I thought.
“Before you chop wood, I thought you ought to help me set things right in here. After you’re done, I’ll see I can feed you.”
“Set things right?” Jinx said.
The old woman studied Jinx. “When I was a child, my family had its own niggers. They gave me one to play with. You remind me of her.”
“How old was you then, about a hundred?” Jinx said.
“I was four or five,” the old woman said. “I’ve lost some count on my age. But I’m near eighty. And you want to sass, you ought to know that little girl they gave me got to thinking she was going to be one with the Lincoln thinkers. Me and her got into a tussle, and my daddy sold her to a traveling house of sin.”
“A what?” Jinx said.
“They made her a whore,” said the old woman.
“She was probably relieved,” Jinx said.
“Just start cleaning,” said the old woman.
21
Just as we started cleaning, the old woman sat in a rocking chair and let the pistol rest in her lap. She was far enough away from us she could bring it up fast.
“You don’t want to throw out nothing precious,” said the old woman.
“And what would that be?” Jinx said. She seemed determined to get shot.
“That would be anything precious, you little smart mouth,” said the old woman.
“Jinx, help me set the table up,” I said, hoping to take the conversation on a different journey.
We set the table up, straightened the chairs, got a broom, and swept up broken plates. Everything was covered in dust, and there was enough of it you could have easily copied out the King James Bible with a finger and some dedicated intention.
I reckoned there had been a fight in there, and whoever it was that was fighting had been serious about it. Stuff was slung everywhere, and there was even some dried turds on the floor. From the heavy coating of dust, and the dryness of the turds, it was easy to figure that the fight had taken place a long time before and things had been left as they were.
There was a shelf dangling by one nail over the fireplace mantel. A hatchet and an ax was leaning up against the wall near the hearth. There was a metal rod in the fireplace, and it went from one side of it to the other, and had a big black pot hanging on it. There was a little fire under the pot. I could see where the old woman had chopped up some furniture for firewood.
While we cleaned, I watched the old woman out of the corner of one eye, and I watched that ax and hatchet with the other. I didn’t want to add murder to my criminal activities, but more than that, I didn’t want to be murdered, which was a thing I thought might be in the planning.
The old woman pointed out a broom to Jinx, and Jinx took it and went to sweeping. The old woman opened the door so she could sweep the dust and such out. It was an old broom, handmade from a slightly crooked stick, some twine, and straw. I figured she probably rode it around the room on full-moon nights.
This went on for some time, this cleaning. I was wondering how it was with Mama and Terry, and this wondering got answered for me about the time we had the place mostly straightened up.
Mama, having not listened to me about staying where she was, or going on without us, come up to the open door just as Jinx was sweeping out some dirt. Mama stuck her pretty head inside. When she did, the old woman pressed the pistol to her nose and without so much as a howdy-do said, “Come on in. There’s plenty of work.”
Mama looked at the gun and the old woman behind it, then she looked at Jinx holding the broom, and then at me. I had just finished righting all the chairs and was standing there with my face hanging out.
“You didn’t stay so good, did you?” I said.
“I got worried,” Mama said.
“And I got the gun,” said the old woman. “Come in this house.”
Mama came in and went right to work. The old woman went back to the rocker and rocked back and forth, pointing the pistol at us.
I managed to get close to Mama and say, “Where’s Terry?”
“Down by the river,” she said. “I thought he’d be fine until I found you.”
“I told you to go on,” I said.
“You can tell me as you choose,” she said. “And I can do as I choose.”
“Y’all shut up,” said the old woman.
We washed dishes and straightened up both rooms of the house. Then the old woman guided us outside with the pistol at our backs, and we came to a woodpile. There was an ax with a rusty blade sticking up in a log. There was some pieces of kindling lying around. Some of it was cut in two, but most of it was big stuff with little limbs still on it. You could see where it had been whittled at now and again. There was a wooden wheelbarrow next to the log, and there was grass grown up around it.
“It takes me too long to get anything done anymore,” she said. “Used to I could cut down a whole tree and turn it into boards, or firewood, or shingles, or a box of toothpicks. I ain’t got the strength no more to push the wheelbarrow, let alone cut wood.”
She had Jinx take the ax and start chopping. She made me and Mama gather up firewood and stack it in the wheelbarrow. She was wily enough not to get too close to any of us, especially Jinx, who was swinging the ax with an enthusiasm that had little to do with splitting wood. Every time Jinx brought the ax down, you could imagine her splitting that old woman’s head from crown to jaw.
While we worked, the old woman kept looking at me and Mama, and eventually she said, “You two some kind of kin?”
“Mother and daughter,” Mama said.
“You look alike plenty in the face, except the girl’s got a stouter jaw,” the old woman said.
I can’t say as any of this was meant as a compliment, but I was surprised to have any part of Mama recognized in myself, and it made me feel kind of good, even if I had a stout jaw. That said, the whole thing with Terry lying down there by the river was starting to get to me, and I decided I had to say something about it, take a chance, because if we didn’t get him away from there before long, he might be dead. Or Skunk might come up and finish him off.
I put a piece of wood in the wheelbarrow, looked over at the old woman and her gun. Out in the sunlight, I could see the whites of her eyes was weepy and red, and the eyes themselves was dark as wet pecan shells. She didn’t have but a few rotting teeth in her mouth.
“Listen, ma’am, I have to tell you there’s a wounded boy down there by the river. He traveled here with us. We just wanted some food, and had to leave him there for a while. My mama was supposed to be watching him, but she abandoned ship.”
“I was worried about you,” Mama said.
I plowed on. “We don’t want no trouble. We’ve cleaned your house, and gathered up wood. We been here for hours, and he’s been down there, hurt. I ain’t asking to get shot, but I got to go down there and get him. That’s all there is to it. Fact is it will probably take two of us to bring him back.”
The old woman pursed her dry
lips and narrowed her weepy eyes. “I tell you what. I’ll keep this mother of yours, and you and this girl go down there and get him. I’ll take a look at him. You don’t come back right smart, I’m going to shoot your mama in the head.”
“All right,” I said. “But you got to give us time to get down there and get hold of him and bring him back. He’s a good-sized boy and he can’t walk at all, so we got to tote him.”
“Just get on with it.”
We went down there, and Terry was still lying in the boat. Me and Jinx tugged him out of it, being careful as we could, and laid him gently on the ground. Then we pulled the boat all the way on shore, dragged it under a tree. There wasn’t no time to waste, so we didn’t try to hide it, just left it. I took our two lard buckets out of it, carried them over to where a bunch of blackberry vines grew, and pushed the cans down in them. It wasn’t a great hiding place, but it was something.
Terry was out of it, and he had a fever hot as the devil’s ass. I got him by the legs and Jinx got his arms, and we managed our way up the riverbank and onto the grass field. We had to put him down a few times and regroup, but we stayed with it.
It had already been getting late when we went down there, and now the sun was angling off behind some trees in a big red glow. Within half an hour, it would be dark.
We got Terry up to the house, and when we did, the old woman was standing there in the doorway with her pistol. She waved the pistol at us, and we carried him inside. She had us lay him out on an old woven rug that might have been some color or another once. Mama was sitting in a chair, her hands in her lap. Near the fireplace was all the wood we had gathered up. The wheelbarrow was by the fireplace.
“I know we ain’t a concern of yours,” I said. “But he sure needs help. If you could just let me attend to him best I can.”
“You go over there and stand by your mama,” she said, then swung the pistol at Jinx. “You too, girl.”
Me and Jinx went to opposite sides of the chair where Mama was and sat down on the floor. I had made up my mind that soon as the chance opened up, I was going to jump that old bat, take my odds with gunfire. I was fed up. My take was if I could get my hands on her, them old bones would get snapped like dry kindling.
The old woman bent down on her knees, the way a horse will do when it goes to settle down before it falls on its side. She did a bit of that until she was off her knees and on her butt. She laid the pistol on the rug beside Terry, reached out, and felt his forehead.
She glanced up at us. “There’s a well out to the side. One of you girls, but not both, go out there and crank up a bucket of water and bring it back.”
I went out and did that. When I came back and sat the bucket down, the old woman wasn’t paying me a lot of mind. The gun was lying on that dusty rug within easy reach. But I hesitated. She was looking at Terry’s hand, and there was something about the way she did it made me think she might even know what she was doing. I went over and sat down on the floor again.
“That hand ain’t no good,” said the old woman. “You there,” she said to Jinx. “Go over there to that trunk, open it up, and bring me that long wooden box out of it.”
Jinx brought the box. This time the old woman had hold of the gun. I guess all that business she had said about having a slave when she was a child and selling it off made her realize Jinx might be in a bad mood. Anyway, Jinx put the box down, and the old woman had me roll over a log of firewood. I couldn’t figure what that was about, but when I was done with that, I went back and sat down on the floor again.
The old woman rolled up the sleeve of the injured arm, and when she did, I let out a gasp. Not only was the hand looking dark and full of sin, so was the arm, near up to the elbow. She put her bony fingers on the side of his neck.
“He ain’t got much pulse,” she said. “He ain’t gonna last no time at all with that arm on him. He may not last long with it off.”
“Say what?” I said.
“You get that bucket of water I had you bring up, and pour it in that pot by the fire. Take down the pot hanging there, stoke up the fire, and put the water on to heat. I’m going to have to take that arm.”
“Take it?” Jinx said.
“It’s got to come off,” said the old woman.
“The hell it does,” Jinx said.
“It ain’t no skin off my nose neither way,” said the old woman. “But it needs to come off, and I know how to do it.”
“You could let us go and we could take him to the doctor,” I said.
“I could, but I ain’t going to,” said the old woman. “Besides, I ain’t got no car, and I ate my plow mule, which is why the house was a mess. I went out and shot him and it didn’t kill him, and he run in here through the open door and we had a hell of a fight. I bet I shot him four times. He was kicking and bucking and throwing turds. He made quite a mess of the place. Even when he went down, I had to reload and shoot him another couple of times. I was right fond of that mule. I point that out to let you understand that you people I don’t even know. So don’t try to get feisty.
“What I’m telling you gals is, by the time you’ve toted him out, even if I was to let you go, he’ll be deader than a dirt clod. Even with his arm off he don’t have a big chance. He’s gotten bad off.”
We just sat there stunned, trying to take in all she was saying.
The old woman patted the wooden box.
“This here is a surgeon’s box,” she said. “My daddy was a surgeon in the Civil War, and after the war he was a doctor way out on the far side of Texas, near a town called Mason. When I was just twelve or so, I helped him nurse folks. I know how this is done. I helped him do it a few times, and I even done it a couple times myself when he was older and sick and took to the bottle. Didn’t no one know I did it, as the patients was under ether. But I knew the way to go about it from watching Daddy. I’ll have to cut through quick, lay out a flap of skin, and saw through the bone. I can do that before you could wipe your ass.”
“You can’t do that to him,” Jinx said, her eyes wet with tears. “He’s too pretty to lose an arm.”
“Everyone is prettier today than they will be tomorrow,” the old woman said. “But dead ain’t pretty at all.”
“I ought to grab up a piece of firewood and stove your head in,” Jinx said.
“You could try that,” the old woman said. “But I know how to give him a chance. I can’t do that with my head stove in. And this here pistol is known to my hand. It was my daddy’s, and he killed Yankees with it. It’s been converted to cartridges, and it’s got six in it. I’m a good shot. I’ve killed plenty of game and a crazy mule, and when I was young and pretty as your mama there I once shot a suitor who didn’t know where to keep his hands. After he was dead, my daddy and brothers hung him to a tree and rode past him on horses and hit him with clubs until you wouldn’t have known if he was a man or a side of beef. So I got the stomach for it.”
“Why would you help us?” I asked.
“I don’t rightly know,” the old woman said.
Mama said, “His arm is bad, kids. It’s real bad. He’s getting worse by the moment.”
“You mean we ought to cut it off?” I said.
The old woman spoke before Mama could. “You don’t, I got some shovels tucked up under the back of the house there. They’ll fit you girls’ hands good enough to dig a grave.”
I looked at Terry. He hardly seemed to be breathing.
“Go ahead and do it,” Mama said.
“What?” I said. “How come you get to choose?”
“Someone’s got to.”
“She’s just a mean old woman wants to cut something off, anything, and on anybody,” Jinx said. “You don’t get to say nothing. He’s our friend, not yours.”
“I can do it or I can’t,” the old woman said.
Jinx said, “Can we get a close look at him?”
The old woman picked up the pistol and scooted back on her butt a ways, said, “Gander all you want, but c
ome at me, and I’ll shoot.”
Jinx moved over first, and I went right behind her. She leaned down, her eyes right close. “Terry,” she said.
He didn’t say nothing back. His eyes was rolled up in his head, white as fresh chicken eggs.
She touched his sweaty forehead. “He’s so hot, Sue Ellen.”
I touched him, too, and I was quick in agreement. “It’s like there’s a brush fire burning inside of him.”
We looked at his arm. It was mostly black now, and swollen up about the size of a plumped-up ham. There was red streaks above the black part, and meat was starting to peel off the arm. It smelled strong of rot. It was oozing pus, and flies had laid maggots in it.
“I don’t think there’s no choice,” I said, looking at Jinx.
“I don’t want to make that call,” she said.
“Ain’t there a doctor somewhere near?” I said to the old woman.
“You could take him by boat, if I was to let you leave, and I won’t do that. I need you people to help me out. I’m old. I ain’t got nobody else.”
“Only friends you can have is the ones you keep at the end of a gun barrel,” Jinx said.
“I reckon that’s true,” the old woman said. “And I can live with that.”
I looked to Mama. I had learned to take my own advice over the years, but now I wanted some.
“What do we do, Mama?”
“A doctor would be best,” Mama said. “But even a doctor couldn’t save that arm. It’s already lost. The only thing now is to not lose Terry. It’s better to lose a piece of him than all of him.”
“Listen to her,” said the old woman.
“We should have took him right away to a doctor,” Jinx said. “When he first got hurt.”
“Shoulda, woulda, coulda,” the old woman said.
“Cut it off, you old bat,” I said, tears in my eyes. “And do it right. Do it right, or gun or no gun, so help me, I’ll kill you and hang you in a tree and beat you with a stick like your father and brothers did that poor man.”
“Once you’re dead it don’t matter,” the old woman said. “Nothing matters then.”