“You stay right where you are, Handsome Brown,” she said.
My old man looked pretty sheepish standing out there in the yard with Ma having a good grip on his overall straps. He cut his eyes around and looked at me. I wanted to say something to him, but I was afraid of what Ma might do to me.
“Now, Morris Stroup,” she said, leading him to the bottom step. “What do you mean by getting a poor innocent colored boy into trouble by making him tell lies for you?”
My old man looked at Handsome, and Handsome looked down at the ground. Nobody said anything for a long time, and I was afraid Ma would make me go inside before I heard what Pa said.
“Why, Martha,” he said in a minute, looking up at her, “there must be a mistake. I’ve never made Handsome tell a falsehood in my whole life. I wouldn’t think of making him do that.”
“Then why did you tell him to tell me you were going off to look at calves when you took that fishing pole and went fishing?”
My old man looked at Handsome again, and Handsome tried to look off across the garden.
“If that’s what Handsome told you, Martha,” Pa said, “it’s the truth if it’s ever been told, because that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. I saw some of the prettiest-looking heifers—”
Ma looked at him real hard, but she did not say anything right away. It was easy to see that she did not believe a word he said.
She looked at my old man in exactly the same way she did when she still had a lot more on her mind to say but was too mad to say it. After that she called me to eat dinner and went into the kitchen. Pa and I washed up in the basin on the shelf and went in and sat down. We ate what Ma gave us without saying a word. When we had finished, my old man went out into the backyard and sat down against the fence to take his midday nap.
Everything was quite and peaceful for a little while.
I happened to look up and I saw Handsome making signs for me to come out there. I tiptoed across the yard and opened the gate without letting it squeak a single bit.
When I got behind the shed, Handsome whispered something in my ear and pointed towards the chinaberry tree beside the hen house. There was the prettiest calf standing there that I had ever seen in all my life. The calf was about one-third full-grown, with silky orange-colored hair, and her nose was round and glistening. She was standing in the shade of the chinaberry tree switching flies with her tail and chewing on a bunch of fresh-cut timothy. She looked as if she had never been so contented before in her whole life.
My old man was still asleep against the other side of the fence, and we were scared we would wake him up if we talked out loud. Handsome made signs at me with his hands. It was easy to see that he liked the calf just as much as I did. He walked around her several times, patting her on the rump and rubbing her on the nose.
We were still patting the calf and admiring her when I heard somebody knock on our front door. Just then I looked over the fence and saw Ma come out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron, and going towards the front of the house. I ran around the shed and tiptoed up to the front porch to see who was coming to see us.
There was a man standing on the porch wearing overalls and a field-straw hat Just then Ma opened the screen door and stepped out.
“Howdy, Mrs. Stroup,” he said, taking off his hat and holding it behind him. “I’m Jim Wade from down near Briar Creek.”
Ma shook hands with him and said something I couldn’t hear.
“I came to ask if you or Mr. Stroup have seen anything of a heifer around your house today,” he said. “I lost one this morning, and several people told me they saw one coming up this way not long ago.”
“I don’t know anything about it,” Ma said. “There hasn’t been a heifer around here to my knowledge. My husband went fishing this morning, and I’m sure he would have mentioned a calf if he had seen one anywhere.”
Mr. Wade turned around and looked up the street for a while.
“It’s sure a funny thing,” he said. “I was certain I’d find her around your place somewhere. A man down at one of the stores said he saw a heifer come up this way just before the lumber-mill whistle blew at twelve o’clock.”
Ma shook her head over and over again, saying she hadn’t seen a calf around our house the whole day.
“You know, Mrs. Stroup,” Mr. Wade said, shaking his head from side to side, “the whole business is peculiar. One of my field hands said somebody walked across my timothy patch this morning and cut a whole armful of timothy and stuffed it inside his shirt. I didn’t pay much attention to that at the time, but about midmorning another one of my field hands said he saw a man walking up the road towards town with a fishing pole over his shoulder and a heifer following just behind. He told me that the man with the fishing pole stopped ever so often and took a bunch of timothy out of his shirt and tied it to the end of the pole. The heifer followed him all the way up the road out of sight. Pretty soon after that I found that one of my heifers was missing from the pasture. And now that’s why I say the whole thing is peculiar. I don’t know what to make of it. It sure looks funny.”
Ma began to look worried, but she did not say anything right away.
“I wouldn’t be bothering you like this, Mrs. Stroup,” he said, “if they hadn’t told me downtown that they saw a heifer coming up this way. That’s why I stopped in to ask if you’d seen one.”
Ma shook hands with Mr. Wade and opened the screen door. After she had gone inside, Mr. Wade walked slowly down the steps, looking up the street and down it. Just before he started walking back towards town, he stooped over and looked all around under our house, which was built about three or four feet off the ground and where there was plenty of head-room for the biggest dogs and almost any sized goat. After he had looked a long time, he got up and dusted off his knees and went on down the street.
I ran back to the shed. My old man was up and nowhere within sight. Handsome Brown was sitting on top of the board fence, with his back to the house, and looking at something on the other side. Just then I heard Ma coming through the house, slamming one door after another, and I got through the gate before she could get to the back porch and see me.
I dashed around the shed, and the first thing I saw was my old man standing in the shade of the chinaberry tree and holding a bunch of fresh-cut timothy for the calf to nibble. Handsome was still on top of the fence watching but not saying a word.
“Pretty Sooky,” my old man said to the calf, rubbing her neck and patting her back.
Just then Ma came running through the gate. She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw my old man and the calf.
“Pretty Sooky,” he said, stroking the calf. “Pretty Sooky.”
Ma moaned just then, and everybody turned around and saw her.
“Martha!” my old man said, coming to the side of the shed and looking at Ma. “What on earth is troubling you, Martha? You look sick.”
Ma straightened up and stumbled over the ground towards us.
“Morris—” she said weakly, “What on earth, Morris?”
Pa went back to the calf and held the timothy for her to nibble.
“It was a funny thing, Martha,” he said. “I was down at Briar Creek fishing early this morning, and I couldn’t get a single solitary bite. I decided to come back home and try again some other morning. On the way I crossed a patch of the finest-looking timothy I’ve seen in a long time, and I pulled a few bunches, just because I admired it so. It wasn’t long after that when I was walking along the road and I just happened to turn around and look behind me, and there was a calf following me. It looked like it was lost. I didn’t pay much attention to her until I got home, and then I turned around again and looked behind me, and there she was, the very same calf. I was here in the yard behind the shed by that time, and so the natural thing to do was to give her some of the timothy I’d stuffed into my shirt just because I’d admired it so. It sure was a funny thing, wasn’t it, Martha?”
Ma came over and looked
at the calf. The calf went on eating the timothy and paid no attention to anybody.
“William,” Ma said suddenly, turning around and looking at me, “you go inside the house and shut the doors and pull down the window shades. I don’t want you to come outside until I call you.”
Every time Ma told me to go inside the house like that it meant she was about to give my old man a scolding. I always hated to go away and leave him when Ma had her dander up, but I had to do what she told me to do.
When she had finished talking to me, she turned and looked up at Handsome on top of the fence. Handsome jumped down as fast as he could without being told.
“Handsome, go on off somewhere and stay until I send for you.”
Handsome started walking across the garden right away.
“And if anybody says something to you about a calf, I don’t want you to open your mouth, Handsome Brown,” Ma said. “The first thing you know you’ll be telling fibs on your own account, if you don’t watch out. You just stay out of people’s way until I send for you. Do you hear me, Handsome?”
“Yes’m, Mis’ Martha,” he said. “I’ll do just like you said. I always try to do just exactly what you and Mr. Morris tell me to do.”
Handsome went on across the garden, but I stayed behind the fence out of sight.
“Now, Morris Stroup,” Ma said, wheeling around towards my old man. “What have you got to say for yourself now? After going off and stealing Jim Wade’s young calf, you ought to have had time to cook up some sort of wild tale. The worst part of it was that you even got Handsome Brown, a poor innocent colored boy, mixed up in your thievery by making him tell a fib for you.”
“Now, wait a minute, Martha,” he said. “Don’t jump at conclusions so fast. This calf just naturally followed me home. I couldn’t help it if she—”
“You couldn’t help it after you’d gone and cut some of Mr. Wade’s timothy to entice her with by tying it on the end of that fishing pole of yours and dangling it in front of her nose every step of the way here.”
My old man looked pretty sheepish while he was trying to think of something to say and wondering at the same time how Ma knew so much about how he had cut the timothy and all the rest.
Ma looked at him real hard, but she did not say anything just then. She watched the heifer nibble the bunch of timothy.
“The only thing I can lay it to,” my old man said, “is that the calf just naturally likes to be around me. I don’t know no other reason why—”
“As soon as the sun goes down this evening, Morris Stroup, you halter that calf and lead it back to Jim Wade’s pasture where you stole it from. And if you meet anybody along the way, black or white, get into the bushes out of sight until they pass, because I don’t want it ever to be known you stole a calf and brought it home in broad day light.”
My old man turned and looked at the heifer, and the heifer turned her head and looked up at him. She kept on looking at him, chewing all the while.
“She sure is a pretty little trick, ain’t she, Martha?” he said, rubbing the calf on her nose and neck. “Pretty Sooky, pretty Sooky.”
The heifer turned and looked at Ma. After a minute of two, Ma went over to the heifer and stroked her on the nose. The heifer kept on looking at Ma straight in the eyes, and Ma acted as if she couldn’t stop looking at her.
They stood there a long time looking into each other’s eyes, and my old man drew another bunch of timothy from his shirt.
“Pretty Sooky,” Ma said, taking the timothy from my old man and holding it for the calf to eat. “It does seem like a shame to take her back out there and make her stay in a pasture all the time. She must get awfully cold at night, and on rainy days.”
Pa went over and sat down against the chinaberry tree and watched Ma and the calf. He did not look a bit worried any more.
“Pretty Sooky,” Ma said, stroking her nose and neck. “Pretty Sooky.”
X. Handsome Brown’s Day Off
MA WENT UP THE STREET to the next corner after breakfast to talk to Mrs. Howard about the Sycamore Ladies’ Improvement Society meeting, and the last thing she said before she left was for Handsome Brown to have the dishes washed and dried and the dishcloths rinsed and hung out to dry in the sun before she got back. It was Handsome’s day off, although he had never had a day off, even though he had worked for us ever since he was eleven years old, because something always seemed to happen that kept him from going away somewhere and loafing for a whole day. Handsome always liked to take his time doing the dishes, no matter whether it was just a regular day like all the others, or whether it was really his day off, because he knew every day always turned out in the end to be the same as any other, anyway; and he generally managed to find a good excuse for not doing the dishes any sooner than he had to. That morning after Ma had gone up to Mrs. Howard’s, he said he was hungry; he went into the kitchen and cooked himself a skilletful of hog-liver scrapple.
My old man was sprawled on the back porch steps dozing in the sun, just as he did every morning after breakfast when he had the chance, because he said a nap after breakfast always made him feel a lot better for the remainder of the day. Handsome took a long time to eat the scrapple, as he knew he had the dishes to do when he finished, and he was still sitting in a chair hunched over the cook-stove eating out of the skillet when somebody knocked on our front door. Since both Pa and Handsome were busy, I went around to the side of the house to find out who it was.
When I got to the front yard, I saw a strange-looking girl, about eighteen or twenty years old, standing at the door with her face pressed against the screen trying to see inside. She was carrying a square tan bag made like a small suitcase, and she was bare-headed with long brown hair curled on the ends. I knew right away I’d never seen her anywhere before, and I thought she was a stranger trying to find the house of somebody in town she had come to visit. I watched her until she put her hand on the latch and tried to open the screen door.
“Who do you want to see?” I asked her, going as far as the bottom step and stopping.
She turned around as quick as a flash.
“Hello, sonny,” she said, coming to the edge of the porch. “Is your father at home?”
“Pa’s taking a nap on the back porch,” I told her. “I’ll go tell him.”
“Wait a second!” she said excitedly, running down the steps and grabbing me by the arm. “You show me where he is. That’ll be a lot better.”
“What do you want to see him about?” I asked, wondering who she was if she really knew my old man. “Are you looking for somebody’s house?”
“Never mind, sonny,” she smiled. “You take me to him.”
We walked around the side of the house and went through the gate into the backyard. Every time the girl took a step a big wave of perfume blew off her and her stockings began sagging under her knees. My old man was sound asleep with his mouth hanging open and the back of his head resting on the top step. He always sprawled out that way when he was sleeping in the sun, because he said it was the only way he could feel comfortable while he dozed. I could see Handsome standing in the kitchen and looking out at us through the screen door while he ate the scrapple from the skillet.
The girl put down her suitcase, pulled her stockings up under her garters, and tiptoed to where my old man was sprawled over the steps. Then she got down beside him and put both hands over his eyes. I could see Handsome stop eating just when he had raised a spoonful of scrapple halfway to his mouth.
“Guess who!” the girl cried.
My old man jumped sort of sidewise, the way he generally did when Ma woke him up when he wasn’t expecting it. He didn’t leap clear off the steps though, because almost as soon as he sat up, the girl pushed his head back and kept him from seeing anything at all. I could see his nose flare open and shut like a hound sniffing a coon up a tree when he got a whiff of the perfume.
“Guess who!” she said again, laughing out loud.
“I’ll bet it ain’t
Martha,” Pa said, feeling her arms all the way up to her elbows.
“Guess again!” she said, teasing him.
My old man flung her hands away and sat up wild-eyed.
“Well, I’ll be dogged!” my old man said. “Who in the world are you?”
The girl got up from the steps, still laughing, and went for her suitcase. While all three of us watched to see what she was going to do, she opened the lid and took out an armful of brand new neckties. She had more ties than a store.
Pa rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and took a good look at the girl while she was bending over the suitcase.
“This would look wonderful on you,” she said, picking out a tie made of bright green and yellow cloth. She went over to where he sat and looped it around his neck. “It was made for you!”
“For me?” Pa said, looking up and sniffing the perfume that floated all around her.
“Of course,” she said, turning her head sideways and taking a good look at Pa and the tie. “It couldn’t suit you better.”
“Lady,” Pa told her, “I don’t know what you’re up to, but whatever it is, you’re wasting your time at it. I ain’t got no more use for a necktie than a pig has with a sidesaddle.”
“But it’s such a beautiful tie,” she said, dropping the armful of ties into her suitcase and coming up closer to my old man. “It just suits your complexion.”
She sat down close beside him on the step and began tying a knot in the tie. They sat there beside each other until my old man’s face turned red all over. The perfume had drifted all over the place by that time.
“Well, what do you know about that!” Pa said, looking as though he didn’t know what he was saying. “Who’d have ever thought a necktie would’ve suited my complexion!”
“Let’s see you in a mirror,” she told him, patting the tie against his chest. “When you look at yourself in a mirror, you’ll know you can’t get along without that tie. Why, it’s perfect on you!”