Paradise Sky

  He gave me a bag, said, “From what you told me, you’re a farmer. You know how to gather ripe tomatoes without pulling down the vines and bruising the fruit, don’t you?”

  I afforded that I did and went to picking. He had one row, and I had the other. We worked right along even with one another, getting hotter and sweatier as the day rolled on.

  He said from his row, “You know, the tomato really is a fruit, not a vegetable.”

  “It ain’t.”

  “It belongs to the nightshade family, and there are nightshade plants that will poison you right down to the toes, but not the tomato.”

  “The mater has a family?”

  “Not with a mommy and daddy and three kids and a horse. No. Everything, plant or animal, bug and such, is said by science to be part of a specific kingdom, class, family, subfamily, genus, species, and so on. I don’t know all the names without having my books in front of me, but that’s how it is.”

  “No shit?” I said.

  “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you, son?”

  “Reckon I don’t.”

  “Then don’t be so goddamn agreeable. Let me explain it to you.”

  Then he did. For most of the day I learned this about maters, that about corn, something about taters, and much about beans, which was called legumes; and there was a name for peas other than peas, though for the life of me I don’t remember it now. Maybe it had the same name. I don’t recall. Radishes had cousins. Sweet taters was distant cousins of the maters, which didn’t seem right, and he threw in that they didn’t belong to the nightshade family like the mater. He said this like I might be relieved to find out they wasn’t. He knew everything there was to know about plants. I myself had plenty of experience plucking, picking, pulling, and digging all that stuff, and I knew how to eat them, but it was beyond me there was more to it than that, or that I was eating plants with family names, which somehow made me feel like a cannibal.

  When he had worn down on that topic, I made the mistake of asking him about how he grew such big plants and juicy maters. I remarked on the dark soil, which wasn’t common around East Texas, it being mostly red or sandy white. Well, now, that was like opening a door with a thundering herd of horses behind it, and here they come. It was all about how he turned the vines back into the soil and let them rot instead of pulling them up and tossing them out like lots of farmers do. That was what Pa had done—tossed them out. This fellow said you folded them back in with the plow along with the right amount of dried and cured chicken and horse and hog manure, and wood ashes if your soil was too acid, which it mostly was in East Texas.

  I already knew about manure and wood ashes, which me and Pa had used, but by the end of the day I knew all about, or had at least heard about, how all the different kinds of dried shit could be mixed with all manner of wasted food, dead plants, and then heated up naturally as it broke down. He kept saying, “You have to layer it.” All of this made me sleepy on my feet, but to my good I endured it.

  Later he sent me up to hitch the horses to a wagon and haul it out to where we had bagged our maters. That trip to the barn and back was nice; the silence was a relief. I, however, was not one who learned from experience. When I got back to him, I asked, “How come you ain’t got no mules, since you got all these horses? It looks like you could afford one.”

  “They are good workers, smart and the illegitimate children of the donkey and the horse. But I figure with me on the place, one ass is enough.”

  Gradually I was learning not to say anything that might start a discussion, cause he seemed to know a little about everything. Or, to be more exact, he seemed to know a lot about very little. I also had to take his word on matters. For all I knew, he didn’t know raccoon shit from coffee beans. Come to think of it, how the hell was a mater a fruit? I was beginning to have suspicions on the sweet tater. Maybe it was in the nightshade family, too.

  We got all those maters hauled in, and it was only midday by then. He was a serious worker.

  He said, “I tell you what. I got some chores need done, and if you’d like to do them while I go into town and sell these tomatoes, when I get back I’ll fix us up a good supper of fried chicken. I’ll rewarm the beans, and we’ll keep some tomatoes to go with it—some of the green ones I can batter and fry up. I might even bake us some sweet potatoes to split and butter. Hell, I’ll buy some brown sugar. You like brown sugar on your sweet potatoes?”

  For him this seemed a question right up there with the greatest concerns a person might have. I agreed I liked brown sugar on sweet taters and that I could do those chores. It was work akin to what I had been doing all my life, and by the time he was heading into town, I was on my way to toss corn to the chickens, slop the hogs, and so on.

  As I went about the chores, I begun to think maybe this fellow was touched, or had caught a musket ball or a chunk of cannon shrapnel in the head and his brain had been knocked loose; maybe even some of it had been blown right out of his skull.

  Then something else hit me, and when it did I felt weak in the knees. It wasn’t a new thought, as you’ve probably already guessed, but it kept coming back, and each time it showed up it seemed as fresh as dew on a rose. I was worried again my farmer might be bringing Ruggert back with him. Could be he had just been making like he was nice so as to get a day’s work out of me, then he would turn me over to an old war buddy for castrating and hanging, and then it would be them slicing maters and pouring brown sugar on baked sweet taters, not me. He might joke with Ruggert about how he fooled me about the nightshade family.

  I didn’t start thinking seriously on this possibility until late in the day, and about the time I had come to believe that was his purpose and was planning a swift decampment, here he come, clattering down the road in his wagon.

  No one was on that road but my man himself, his wagon, and his team.

  He was good as his word. After I helped unhitch the horses and we groomed them and put them away, he went out back and picked two fat hens and wrung their necks, doing them both by using his left and right hand at the same time. When he had their necks wrung out good, he popped them, causing their heads to come plumb off in his hands. The chickens hit the ground, spurting blood, running around like they had some place to go. I will tell you true, I have seen that done many times, and have done it myself, but I never did get used to it. It made me want to jump and holler.

  Finally the chickens fell over. We took them, sat on overturned tubs, and went to plucking feathers. He had us toss the feathers in another tub, said they’d be mixed into his compost pile, as he called it, that being the layered business he had told me about.

  It took some time, but we got them plucked, then he took a knife and cut them open, took out the sweetbreads, put them in a pan, then cut the chickens up quick and smooth, tossed their parts in the pan, too.

  Wasn’t long after that that the chickens was washed, flour-rolled, salted and peppered, and set to frying. When it was done, we took a gizzard apiece to start with, then came the livers and hearts, then a leg apiece, and so on right down to the necks. I even chewed open a bone and sucked on it.

  “I seen Sam Ruggert today,” he said when we come to the part where we was wiping our greasy fingers on nice white napkins.

  “Say you did?” I tried to make the question casual, but for an instant I thought my fried chicken might come up, leave the house on its own, collect its head and feathers, and go back to the coop.

  “Yeah. He was still all het up about the darky that come on to his wife and tried to take her womanhood, like he and everyone that ever knew her hadn’t already done that. Hell, I fucked her once. He said he fought you off and you stole a horse and run away. When your old pa tried to stop you from a life of crime, you killed him and burned him up and his house. He didn’t mention the hog.”

  “Ain’t none of it like that.”

  “Oh, no one in town really thinks it’s like that,” he said. “Not really. They like to put the justify on
it. They all know that old slattern of a wife wasn’t attacked by nobody, and the horse you took come back home. Ain’t no one really thought you killed your pa, though that’s what they’re putting on the wanted poster.”

  “Wanted poster?”

  “Yeah. They wrote out your general description, making heavy note of them ears, and wrote on it what they say you done. They’re offering one hundred dollars for you.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “Seems some of the townfolk got together and chipped in for a reward. It don’t say on the poster that half of that goes to the sheriff, but it probably does. That’s solid money, son.”

  “I better run then,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t do that. Not just yet. They wouldn’t expect to find you at my place. If we play our cards right, no one will know you’re here. Give it some time, then you can be on your way. Again, you may not be safe here, but you’re safer than being on the road. I don’t get much in the way of visitors too often, as I’m not well liked.”

  This confused me. He seemed as affable a man as I ever met. So affable that at first I hadn’t trusted him.

  “I got different views on things than they do, and that upsets them enough to think I’m strange, and maybe crazy, and probably dangerous. I am dangerous, you know.”

  That last part, about being dangerous, I thought might be his way of joking.

  “You think Ruggert will give up looking for me in a piece?” I said. “Actually, it’s me ought to be looking for him after what he done to my pa.”

  “I’d get that vengeance out of your head. There might come a time, but this wouldn’t be it. Let me tell you about Sam Ruggert. Told you me and him served together, but I didn’t tell you how it was with the pair of us. He was a fellow that latched onto folks. I don’t mean me. I sensed all the time I knew him that he had an outlook that could be discomforting, so I kept my distance. Thing is, Sam don’t like to hear no.”

  “Who does?” I said.

  “He don’t like it a lot. He’s one of them that if he wants something, like a woman, and she don’t want him, he takes it in his head that they got them a connection anyway, even if one never existed. He takes to following her around. When she puts him off, that just makes it stronger for him. Before the war there was a very nice woman that lived in town, and Sam took to her. She didn’t to him. He wouldn’t leave her alone, and things got pretty bad. One day he came to her house and broke in. Turned out, though, there was three men walking in the street in front of the house, and they seen him run in. They dragged him out and whipped his ass. It took all three. Sam is rough as a cob.

  “The woman was foolish-kind, though, said it was all a misunderstanding, and it was written off, as lots of his acts were written off in these parts. It was determined to just be his way, so to speak. Well, his way was ugly. About a month later that woman disappeared. No one could lay it on Sam, but there were those among us who thought he had done away with her.

  “Few years went by, and there was more incidents like that, though maybe not as open. But it got so anyone Sam fixated on ended up dead or missing, and that included wives. No one could nail Sam to the wall on it. It wasn’t just women, though. There was the first owner of the livery where Sam tried to get a job but was turned down. He kept coming back, wouldn’t take no for an answer. That seems like a good work ethic at first, but in time you need to know the difference between if you’re going to get a job or if you aren’t. He didn’t know that difference. Eventually he seemed to take the hint. But near a year later that liveryman was found beaten to death, lying up in a ditch at the back of town. I figured Sam for it, and some others did, too, but nothing could be proved. It’s not like with colored folks, where you don’t have to prove it. With a white fellow you do. You see, he nursed that grudge for a year, and it wasn’t nothing other than that man not having a job for him. By this time Sam had got his growth, and it was a solid growth. He wasn’t one to be contradicted, and people around town grew to fear him.”

  “You, too?”

  “I’m not always smart enough to be scared when I should. Besides, Sam knew if he bothered me the undertaker would be wiping his ass. What you see sitting before you is a contented farmer with a chicken dinner in his stomach, but what I am is a man not to be trifled with. Follow me?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, though I wasn’t sure I did.

  “We went to war later, being from the same part of the country. We ended up together. Not like my boy, who ended up as part of the Virginia bunch of soldiers that got pounded at Gettysburg, which is where his watch got stopped. But me and Sam went together. I was lucky he never fastened himself to me in any way, and he seemed fearful of me. Which was a good way for him to be. During the war, though, he gained him some skills, which was mostly always falling to the back of the line during a big battle or faking a wound or some such. He did get fastened on this one young man, though, and wanted to be friends with him in the worst way. I think it was because that young fellow came from a good family, and Sam imagined himself being elevated to a higher position by association. Least I think that was what was on his mind. That boy may have been young, but he was a wise one. He kept Sam at arm’s length.

  “That didn’t set right with Sam. Pretty soon he was following that boy around in camp, hanging with him in battle, even if the boy made it to the front lines, which he always seemed to do. As I was saying, before he got interested in that kid, Sam had nothing to do with the front lines. Yet it wasn’t any good. Sam couldn’t make the connection he wanted, whatever it was, and that boy told him off right in front of a bunch of us. About how he wanted Sam to get off his ass, cause he didn’t need no set of tail feathers or some such. He dressed Sam down mighty strong. That was his undoing.

  “One night we camped, and the next morning they found that kid facedown in the latrine we had dug. Back of his head was split wide open, like with a camp ax. No one seen it happen or knew who done it. There was an attempt to investigate, but it was wartime, and we were on the move by midmorning. On we went, and on we fought, then it was the end of the war, and we all went home.

  “So Sam, he’s put a brand on you in his mind, same as them others, and my thinking is he won’t let go. He’ll keep on coming or send someone to keep coming after you if he can’t.”

  “No one is that loco,” I said.

  “He is.”

  “Then I ought to go back and kill him. Put an end to it.”

  “You haven’t a chance. Ought to stay right here and work for me for room and board. I’ll pick up a thing or two you need when I go to town. I’ll teach you how to take care of yourself. Use a gun. Ride a horse like a real rider. We’ll make it a better horse than the one you rode in on. A better one than the one you was going to steal. Even then you should go on and forget Sam. In these parts even the people that hate him will hate you more because there’s coffee in your color. Here’s another thing, son. You don’t need to go back for him, because he’ll come for you. It might take some time, but he’ll sniff you out eventually. When you least expect him, there he’ll be. But for now, this place is as good a place as any, and you got me for backup. All that said, there’ll come a time when you should move on. Let him look for you then. You got to lead a man like that out into deep water and drown him.”

  “I had a chance to actually do just that, and I didn’t,” I said.

  He nodded, remembering my story.

  “Well, son, what’s it going to be? And if you’re wondering why I would bother, it’s because I need the help around here, and I haven’t a good word for Ruggert.”

  I said I needed to think on it a spell, but it was a short spell. I answered within a few moments of putting my mind to it.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll settle on your idea until I have to fly away from it.”

  “Good, then,” he said, and he looked really happy about it. “Now, I think it might be a good time for us to exchange names. I didn’t do it right away in case you might need killing.
I find it a lot easier to kill someone whose name I don’t know. By now I think we can make that swap of information without fear of murder, dismemberment, the loss of an eye, or a stretch of hurt feelings.”

  “Willie Jackson,” I said.

  “Mine’s Tate Loving,” he said.

  “Glad to meet you Mr. Loving.”

  This was the beginning of my association with Tate Loving.

  4

  Now, at this point I’m going to jump ahead a bit, because after us giving each other our names it was the beginning of me planning to leave every day and then not doing it. I stayed there with Mr. Loving and worked out my room and board. He gave me a place in the barn, up in the loft, which had a door that opened out in the air so as to give a view of the house and the road that was up ahead of it. It was for forking hay down to the ground below, but it was a good vigil.

  Some nights I would sit up there with that loft door open and find myself looking at those constellations Mr. Loving was always telling me about and the stories that went along with them. They nearly all seemed to end with someone getting killed or raped by a duck or a goose or a bull or some such and getting thrown up into the sky as a batch of stars by way of apology, though why that was supposed to be a satisfying reward I couldn’t figure.

  That loft was mighty cozy. Half of it was given over to stacks of hay, but the other half had a good bed in it with solid ticking. There was a table and chairs, a kerosene lamp, and some odds and ends that made it a nice little home for a runaway ass-looker, part-time horse thief, and sometime farmhand.

  I was given a hive of clothes that had belonged to Mr. Loving’s son, including lace-up work boots and riding boots with pointy toes made of fine, soft black leather. Them was for dressing up. If I had some place to go, you bet I would have worn them. As it was, I tried them on now and then with some of the finer clothes and walked around up there in the loft like I was about to strut off to a barn dance. It all fit like it had been made for me.