Then I crossed the creek and ran up the lane toward the house, keeping close to the fence that was covered over with honeysuckle vines.
It didn’t take long to get as far as the garden, and as soon as I looked around the corner post I saw Ida standing at the garden gate. All she was doing was standing there switching flies with her tail. I think she must have recognized me right away, because she pricked up both ears and held them straight up in the air while she watched me.
I had started crawling around the garden fence when I looked across Mrs. Weatherbee’s backyard and saw Ma coming jumping. She was leaping over the cotton rows, headed straight for the backyard.
Just then I heard Mrs. Weatherbee giggle. I looked toward the house, and I didn’t even have to get up off my knees to see her and my old man; Mrs. Weatherbee kept it up, giggling as if she were out of her head, just exactly like the girls at school did when they knew a secret about something. At first all I could see was Mrs. Weatherbee’s bare legs and feet dangling over the side of the porch. Then I saw my old man standing on the ground tickling her with a chicken feather. Mrs. Weatherbee was lying on her back on the porch, and he was standing there tickling her bare toes for all he was worth. Every once in a while he would sort of leap off the ground when she giggled the loudest. She had taken off her shoes and stockings, because I could see them in a heap on the porch.
Mrs. Weatherbee was not old like the other married women, because she had been going to high school in town when she got married that spring, and she had been a grass widow for only three or four months. She lay there on the porch squirming on her back, kicking her feet over the edge, and screaming and giggling like she was going to die if my old man didn’t stop tickling her with the chicken feather. Every once in a while she would laugh as loud as she could, and that made everything funnier than ever, because when she did that my old man would leap up into the air like a kangaroo.
I had forgotten all about Ma, because I was so busy listening to Mrs. Weatherbee and watching my old man, but just then I looked across the yard and saw Ma coming. She made straight for the porch where they were.
Everything happened so fast from then on that it was hard to follow what was taking place. The first thing I knew after that was when Ma grabbed my old man by the hair on his head and slung him backward, clear off his feet. Then she grabbed one of Mrs. Weatherbee’s bare feet and bit it as hard as she could. Mrs. Weatherbee let out a scream that must have been heard all the way to Sycamore.
Mrs. Weatherbee sat up then, and Ma grabbed at her, getting a good grip on the neck of her calico dress. It ripped away from her just like a piece of loose wallpaper. Mrs. Weatherbee screamed again when she saw her dress go.
By that time Ma had turned on my old man. He was sitting on the ground, too scared to move an inch.
“What do you mean by this, Morris Stroup!” she yelled at him.
“Why, Martha, I only just came out here to do a good deed for a poor widow woman,” he said, looking up at Ma the way he does when he’s scared. “Her garden sass needed cultivating, and so I just hitched up Ida and came out here to plow it a little for her.”
Ma whirled around and grabbed at Mrs. Weatherbee again. This time the only way she could get a grip on Mrs. Weatherbee was to clutch her by the hair.
“I reckon, Morris Stroup,” Ma said, turning her head and looking down at my old man, “that tickling a grass widow’s toes with a chicken feather makes the garden sass grow better!”
“Now, Martha,” he said, sliding backward on the ground away from her, “I didn’t think of it that way at all. I just wanted to do the widow woman a kindly deed when I saw her sass growing weedy.”
“Shut up, Morris Stroup!” Ma said. “The next thing you’ll be doing will be putting the blame on Ida.”
“Now, Martha,” my old man said, sliding away some more on the seat of his pants, “that ain’t no way to look at things. She’s a poor widow woman.”
“I’ll look at it the way I please,” Ma said, stamping her foot. “I have to go out and strip the leaves off milk weeds for enough food to keep body and soul together while you go around the country with a mule and plow cultivating grass widows’ gardens. Not to mention tickling their bare toes with chicken feathers, besides. That’s a pretty howdy-do!”
My old man opened his mouth as though he wanted to say something, but Ma turned Mrs. Weatherbee loose and grabbed him by his overall straps before he could speak a single word. Then she led him at a fast pace to the garden post where Ida was tied up. She took Ida by the bridle with one hand, still pulling my old man with the other, and started across the cotton field toward home. Ida knew something was wrong, because she trotted to keep up with Ma without being told to.
I raced down the lane to the creek, and hurried home by the short cut. I got there only a minute ahead of them.
When Ma came into our backyard leading Ida and my old man, I couldn’t keep from snickering a little at the way both of them looked. Ida looked every bit as sheepish as my old man.
Ma glanced up at me standing on the porch.
“Stop that going-on, William,” she said crossly. “Sometimes I think you’re just as bad as your Pa.”
My old man cut his eyes around and looked up at me. He winked with his right eye and went across the yard to Ida’s stall, following Ma as meek as a pup. Just before they went into the shed, my old man stooped down and picked up a chicken feather that one of the hens had shed. While Ma was leading Ida inside, he stuffed the feather into his pocket out of sight.
V. The Time Ma Spent the Day at Aunt Bessie’s
MA GOT UP EARLY and cooked our breakfast and left it warming on the stove for us. I was awake, but my old man still had his head buried under the covers when she rode off with Uncle Ben to spend the day with Aunt Bessie in the country. As soon as she had left, Pa looked out from under the quilt and asked me if Ma said anything before she got in with Uncle Ben and drove away. I told him she didn’t say a word, because she thought both of us were still asleep.
While we were getting dressed, Pa said we would have to try to manage to get along somehow by ourselves the best we could until Ma came back that night. Ma always went out to spend the day with her sister once during the summer, and sometimes twice. She said it was the only real vacation she ever got, and that she would like to go more often if she wasn’t afraid of what might happen while she was away.
“There’s nothing like keeping batch,” Pa said, “even if it’s only for one day. It’s a real treat sometimes not to have any womenfolk around.”
After breakfast my old man went out into the sunshine and stretched. It was already hot that morning, and there wasn’t a cloud anywhere in sight.
“This sure is a fine day,” he said, turning around and looking at me. “The sun’s shining, and we’ve got the whole wide world before us. It’s a pity your Ma can’t get the chance to spend the day a lot more often with your Aunt Bessie.”
He went over to the fence and leaned against it. I saw him looking out across the garden, watching some sparrows scratching under the cabbages. After a while he picked up a rock and threw it at them.
“Let’s go fishing, son,” he said turning around. “This is a fine time to go. Hitch up Ida.”
I went out to the stable right away and led Ida out into the yard and began brushing her down with the currycomb. Pa told me to curry her good and then to hitch her to the cart.
“I’ll be ready to leave as soon as I get back from the store,” he said. “I’ve got to get me a sack of smoking tobacco.”
He went into the henhouse and took a couple of eggs from the nests and put them into his pocket to trade for tobacco.
“Curry Ida down until she looks spick-and-span, son,” he said starting down the street. “I want Ida to look good on a fine day like this.”
“Who’s going to dig the bait, Pa?” I asked him.
He stopped and thought a minute, and he said to tell Handsome Brown to dig the worms.
&nb
sp; My old man went down the street to the store and I called Handsome. Handsome was smiling all over when he came out where I was currying Ida.
“I sure am glad Mr. Morris said we’re going fishing,” Handsome said. “I’ve been itching to go fishing for a good long while.”
He got a spade and went behind the stable where the earth was damp in the shade of the chinaberry tree. He started digging for fishing worms right away.
Handsome dug a tomato can full of worms while I was hitching Ida to the cart. We climbed in and sat down to wait for Pa to get back. He wasn’t long in coming, but he was hurrying faster than I had seen him walk in a long time. He was almost running.
He came rushing up to the cart and I was about to hand him the reins when he took Ida by the bridle and led her to a fence post. He tied her up in a hurry.
“What’s the matter, Pa?” I asked.
“Never mind about going fishing now,” he said. “Fishing can wait. We’ve got to get busy doing something else right away.”
“Why, Pa?” I asked. “Why can’t we go fishing?”
“Mr. Morris,” Handsome said, standing up in the cart, “I done dug a heaping-big can full of the biggest fishing worms you ever saw. They’ll be a big loss if we don’t go down to the creek and use them. They’re mighty fine worms, Mr. Morris.”
My old man started off toward the backyard waving his hand at us and making motions for us to come along. We climbed out of the cart to see what he was going to do.
When we got to the backyard, I saw Pa get down on his hands and knees and crawl under the porch. I didn’t know what he was doing under there, so I crawled under behind him.
“What are you looking for under here, Pa?” I asked him. “What’s under the house?”
“Pieces of old iron, son,” he said. He began raking the dry, dusty earth with his fingers. In a minute or two he brought up a piece of rusty iron that looked like a wheel from an old sewing machine. “There’s any number of pieces of old iron laying around the place, and now’s the time to get them together. There’s a man downtown buying up all the old scrap iron folks bring him and he pays good money for it, fifty cents a hundred pounds, I can’t afford to let a chance like this go by without doing something about it. The man might not ever come back to Sycamore again, and it would be a big loss not to be able to make all this easy money. Let’s get busy and pick up all the old pieces of iron we can find.”
I turned around and saw Handsome crawling in behind us on his hands and knees. “What we doing here under the house like this, Mr. Morris?” he asked.
“Picking up old scrap iron,” Pa said. “Get busy and help out.”
“Who wants to waste time picking up old pieces of iron,” Handsome said, “right when we’s ready to go fishing?”
“Shut up, Handsome,” Pa said. “Don’t you talk back to me like that. Get busy and do like I said.”
Handsome crawled off under the main part of the house mumbling to himself. I could see him stop every once in a while and feel around in the dust for iron, but he didn’t look as if he cared whether he found any or not.
“Can we go fishing when we finished picking up the old iron, Pa?” I asked.
“We’ll go as soon as we get it all picked up and sold,” he said. “If everybody’ll pitch in and work hard, we’ll finish in no time. We still have the better part of the day to fish in before your Ma gets back tonight.”
We found three or four pieces of an old cookstove, and an old iron tire from a wagon wheel. We carried everything out into the yard and threw it in a pile beside the fence. After that we found a lot of pieces of old iron in the woodshed, and Handsome found an old washpot under the porch steps. Pa found a heavy iron wheel and dumped it on the pile. We worked away as hard as we could for almost an hour after that, turning over the trash pile, collecting all the old horseshoes Ida had worn out, and looking everywhere we could for things made of iron.
In the middle of the morning Pa stopped and looked at the pile we had collected.
“There ain’t near as much old iron around the place as I estimated at the start,” he said. “We’ll be lucky if all the scrap in that pile weighs two or three hundred pounds. We need about a thousand pounds to bring us some real money. A thousand pounds would bring five dollars when we sold it to the man.”
“Maybe it ain’t worth the trouble fooling around with, Mr. Morris,” Handsome said. “We still got plenty of time to go fishing, though.”
“Shut up, Handsome,” Pa said. “I’ve made up my mind to make some money selling the man scrap iron, and I’m going to do it. Now, shut up and look some more.”
He sent us around to the front of the house to look again, and while we were gone he walked out the back gate into the alley. Handsome and I had found some old rusty door hinges under the front porch and we threw them on the pile.
While we were sitting down resting, my old man came staggering through the alley gate carrying a big load of iron. He had the handle from a pump, a couple of sad irons, an ax blade, an iron washpot, and a lot of other things. All the pieces looked a lot newer than the things we had found around our house, and the washpot was still warm from having had a fire under it. He threw the load on the pile and went right back through the alley gate again.
When he came back the next time, he was carrying more than ever. He was weighted down so much that his knees sagged when he walked, and it was all he could do to reach the fence and drop the load on the pile. In the second load he had brought a set of shiny monkey wrenches, a pair of fireplace tongs, and a poker, a heavy iron skillet, and a lot or small things.
“I don’t see how you can find all them things, Mr. Morris,” Handsome said. “I done my best, but I couldn’t find nothing like it.”
Pa didn’t say anything, but he wiped his face with his shirtsleeve.
“What are we going to do now, Pa?” I asked.
“Drive Ida and the cart around here, son,” he said “We’ll load up and then I’ll drive down and collect the money from the man. I figure we ought to have a thousand pounds or more. That’ll bring in a lot of money I hadn’t figured on before.”
Handsome and I led Ida around to the pile of scrap iron, and all of us pitched in and loaded it into the cart. When we had finished, Pa got a drink from the water bucket and climbed in and picked up the reins.
“Is we still going fishing today, Mr. Morris?” Handsome said.
“I’ll be back in no time,” Pa said, slapping Ida on the back with the reins. “I’ll be back as soon as I get the money from the man.”
Handsome and I sat down on the steps and watched Pa drive off. We sat there a long time, and the sun climbed higher and higher. After a while Handsome went inside to look at the clock. The sun was directly overhead by then.
We waited another hour, and then I saw Ida’s big ears bobbing up and down over the garden fence. We jumped up and ran out to meet my old man. He slapped Ida with the reins and turned into the yard.
“Is we ready to go fishing now, Mr. Morris?” Handsome said. “If we don’t hurry and get to the creek, all the fish will stop biting for the rest of the day.”
Pa climbed out, holding a brand-new pair of knee-length rubber boots. He put them on the ground while we looked at them.
“When I collected the four dollars for the scrap iron from the man,” Pa said, standing back and looking at the rubber boots, “the first thing I thought of was this pair of boots in Frank Dunn’s store. I’ve sure been needing them for a long time. I don’t see how I managed to get along without them up to now.”
“What is you going to do with them, Mr. Morris?” Handsome asked.
“Wear them like they was meant to be,” Pa said.
“I ain’t never seen it get muddy enough around here in this sandy country to need knee-high rubber boots,” Handsome said.
“That’s because you never took the trouble to notice how damp it gets sometimes when it rains,” Pa said.
“Maybe so,” Handsome said, “but it
always manages to dry up half an hour afterward, and it would take that much time to find them boots and put them on. Looks like to me we could have spent all the wasted time fishing. Mis’ Martha’s going to be coming back here tonight, and I won’t have another chance to go fishing until next year. We sure could have caught a lot of fish while you was wasting the time fooling around with them boots.”
“You’d better mind how you talk,” Pa said. “Now, I’ve got half a mind to go off to the creek and leave you behind.”
“Please don’t do that, Mr. Morris,” Handsome said. “I didn’t mean that about the boots. They’re the handsomest rubber boots I ever saw before in all my life. They’re the finest kind of things to have handy when it rains. I wish I owned them, because I’d be mighty proud.”
Pa got out and went to the water bucket for another drink. Then he came back and laid his hand on the cart.
“Where’s the can of worms, son?” he asked.
I ran and got the worms, and all of us climbed in. Pa picked up the reins and was about to slap Ida on the back when Mrs. Fuller came running in through the alley gate. Mrs. Fuller was a widow who lived down on the next street at the end of the alley and took in boarders for a living. She was about fifty or sixty years old, and was always complaining about something.
“Just a minute there, Morris Stroup!” Mrs. Fuller said, running up to the cart and jerking the reins from Pa’s hands.
Pa tried to get out of the cart, but she stood in his way.
“Where’s the things you took off my back porch, Morris Stroup?” she said. “There ain’t a drop of water in my house, and I can’t get none, because you walked off with my pump handle!”
“There must be some sort of mix-up,” Pa said. “You know I’m not the sort of neighbor who’d take a pump handle.”
“One of my boarders saw you sneak in my backyard and make off with a lot of my things, including my pump handle, Morris Stroup,” she said, shaking her finger at Pa. “You took my sadirons, my tongs and poker, and goodness knows what else. Now I want them back right away, or I’ll call the town marshal!”