“You go to the high school?”
“Went one year,” she said. “That was enough for me.”
“You don’t go to school?” I was amazed at this fact. “Wow!”
“She goes to school,” the mother said, her needles at work. “School of
hard knocks, same as I did.”
“Aw, Mom,” Chile said; from her cupid’s-bow mouth, two words could sound
like music.
I forgot about the stinging. Pain was nothing to a man like me. As
Chile’s mother said, I could take it. I looked around the gloomy room, with
its stained and battered sticks of furniture, and when I looked at Chile’s
face again, it was like seeing the sun after a long, stormy night. Though the
iodine was cruel, her touch was gentle. I imagined she must like me, to be so
gentle. I had seen her naked. In all my life I had seen no female naked but my
mother. I had been in the presence of Chile Willow only a short time, but what
is time when a heart speaks? My heart was speaking to Chile Willow in that
moment, as she bathed my cuts and gave me a smile. My heart was saying If you
were my girlfriend I would give you a hundred lightning bugs in a green glass
jar, so you could always see your way. I would give you a meadow full of
wildflowers, where no two blooms would ever be alike. I would give you my
bicycle, with its golden eye to protect you. I would write a story for you,
and make you a princess who lived in a white marble castle. If you would only
like me, I would give you magic. If you would only like me.
If you would only—
“You’re a brave little boy,” Chile said.
From the rear of the house, a baby began crying.
“Oh, Lord,” Chile’s mother said, and she put aside her needles. “Bubba’s
woke up.” She stood up and walked in the direction of the crying, her
flipflops smacking the splintery floor.
“I’ll feed him in a minute,” Chile said.
“Naw, I’ll do it. Bill’s gonna be back soon, and if I was you, I’d put
that ring back on. You know how crazy he gets.”
“Uh-huh, do I ever.” This was said under Chile’s breath. Something in her
eyes had darkened. She swabbed the last thorn scrape and capped the iodine
bottle. “There you go. All done.”
Chile’s mother returned, holding an infant that wasn’t a year old. I
stood in the middle of the room, my skin screaming as Chile got off her knees
and went back into the kitchen. When she came back, she was wearing a thin
gold band on the third finger of her left hand. She took the baby from her
mother and began to rock it and croon softly.
“He’s a feisty thing,” the older woman said. “Gonna be a handful, that’s
for sure.” She went to a window and pulled aside a flimsy curtain. “Here comes
Bill now. Gonna get your ride home, fella.”
I heard the pickup truck clattering as it pulled up almost to the porch.
A door opened and slammed. Then through the screen door came Bill, who was
tall and slim and had a crew cut and was all of eighteen years old. He wore
dirty jeans and a blue shirt with a grease stain on the front, and he had
heavy-lidded brown eyes and was chewing on a match. “Who’s he?” he asked,
first thing.
“Boy needs a ride to Zephyr,” Chile’s mother told him. “Got hisself lost
in the woods.”
“I ain’t gone take him to Zephyr!” Bill protested with a scowl. “It’s
hotter’n hell in that truck!”
“Where’d you go?” Chile asked, her arms full of baby.
“Fixed that engine for old man Walsh. And if you think that was fun, you
got another think comin’.” He glanced at her as he strode past toward the
kitchen. I saw him look right through her, as if she wasn’t even there, and
Chile’s eyes had deadened.
“You get any money?” the mother called after him.
“Yeah, I got some money! You think I’m stupid, I wouldn’t get no money
for a job like that?”
“Bubba needs some fresh milk!” Chile said.
I heard the faucet pumping slimy water. “Shit,” Bill muttered.
“You gonna take this boy home to Zephyr, or not?” Chile’s mother asked.
“Not,” he answered.
“Here.” Chile offered the baby to her mother. “I’ll drive him, then.”
“The hell you say!” Bill came back into the room, holding brown water in
another Flintstones jelly glass. “You can’t drive nowhere, you ain’t got no
license!”
“I keep tellin’ you I ought to—”
“You don’t need to do no drivin’,” Bill said, and he looked right through
her again. “Your place is in this house. Tell her, Mrs. Purcell.”
“I ain’t barkin’ up nobody’s tree,” Chile’s mother said, but she didn’t
take the infant. She sat down in her rocking chair, put the cigarette in her
mouth, and gripped the knitting needles.
Bill drank down the brown water and made a face. “All right, then. Hell
with it. I’ll take him to that gas station over near the base. He can use the
pay phone.”
“That okay with you, Cory?” Chile asked me.
“I…” My head was still spinning, and the sight of that gold ring hurt my
eyes. “I guess so.”
“Well, you better take what I’m offerin’ or I’ll just kick your butt out
the door,” Bill warned.
“I don’t have any money for the phone,” I said.
“Boy, you’re in damn sorry shape, ain’t you?” Bill took the glass back to
the kitchen. “You ain’t gettin’ none of my work money, that’s for sure!”
Chile reached down into the pocket of her jeans. “I’ve got some money,”
she said, and her hand came out clutching a small red plastic purse in the
shape of a heart. It was cracked and much-used, the kind of thing a little
girl might buy at Woolworth’s for ninety-nine cents. She popped it open. I saw
a few coins inside it. “I just need a dime,” I told her. She gave me a dime,
one with Mercury’s head on it, and I shoved it into my own pocket. She smiled
at me, which was worth a fortune. “You’ll get home all right.”
“I know I will.” I looked at the infant’s face, and I saw he had her
beautiful eyes of cornflower blue.
“Come on, if you’re comin’,” Bill said on his way past me to the door. He
didn’t spare a glance at his wife or baby. He went on out, the screen door
slammed, and I heard the truck’s engine snort.
I could not tear myself away from Chile Willow. In later years I would
hear about the “chemistry” between two people, and what that meant; I would be
told by my father about the “birds and the bees” but of course by then I would
know all about it from my schoolmates. All I knew at that moment was a
longing: to be older, taller, stronger, and handsome. To be able to kiss the
lips of her lovely face, and crank back time so she didn’t have Bill’s baby in
her arms. What I wanted to say to her, in that moment, was: You should’ve
waited for me.
“Go on home where you belong, boy,” Mrs. Purcell said. She was watching
me intently, her needles paused, and I wondered if she knew what was in my
head.
I would never set foot in this house again. I would never again see Chile
Willow. I knew this, and I drank her in while I could.
Outside, Bill leaned on the horn. Bubba started crying again.
“Thank you,” I told Chile, and I took my wet shirt and walked out into
the sunlight. The truck was painted bilious green, its sides dented up, its
body sagging to the left. A pair of red velvet dice dangled from the rearview
mirror. I climbed into the passenger seat, a spring jabbing my butt. On the
floorboard was a toolbox and coils of wires, and though the windows were
rolled down, the interior smelled like sweat and a sickly sweet odor I later
came to connect with miserable poverty. I looked at the house’s doorway and
saw Chile emerge into the light, cradling her baby. “Stop and get him some
milk, Bill!” she called. I could see her mother standing behind her, in the
musty gloom. It occurred to me that their faces were very much alike, though
one had already been weathered by time and circumstance, probably a lot of
disappointment and bitterness, too. I hoped Chile would be spared such a
journey. I hoped she would never lock her smile away, and forget where she’d
put the key.
“’Bye, now!” she said to me.
I waved. Bill pulled the pickup truck away from the house, and dust
boiled up off the road between Chile Willow and me.
It was a mile or more until the pavement started. Bill drove in silence,
and let me off at a gas station on the edge of the air force base. As I was
getting out, he said, “Hey, boy! Better watch where you put your pecker.” Then
he drove away, and I stood alone on the hot concrete.
Pain was nothing to a man like me.
The gas station’s owner showed me where the pay phone was. I started to
put the Mercury-head dime into the slot, but I couldn’t let go of it. It had
come from Chile Willow’s purse. I just couldn’t. I asked the owner to let me
borrow a dime, telling him my dad would pay him back. “I ain’t no bank,” he
huffed, but he took a dime out of the cash register anyway. In another moment
it was tinkling down into the pay phone. I dialed the number, and Mom picked
up on the second ring.
My folks were there to pick me up in about half an hour. I expected the
worst, but I got a rib-busting squeeze from my mother and my dad grinned and
cuffed me on the back of my head and I knew I was in high cotton. On the drive
home, I learned that Davy Ray and Ben had reached Zephyr together about seven
this morning and Sheriff Amory knew the whole story, that two masked men had
bought something in a wooden box from Biggun Blaylock and then the Blaylocks
had chased us through the forest. “The men with the masks were Mr. Hargison
and Mr. Moultry,” I said. I felt bad about this, because I recalled that Mr.
Hargison had saved our skins from the Branlins. Still and all, the sheriff
needed to know.
We passed the Air Force base, its runways and barracks and buildings
enclosed by a high mesh fence topped with barbed wire. We drove along the
forest road, passing the turnoff to the house of bad girls. Dad slowed almost
imperceptibly as we drove past Saxon’s Lake, but he didn’t look at it. The
exact place where I’d seen the figure in the flapping coat was lost in summer
growth. As soon as the lake was behind us, Dad picked up speed again.
I was lavished with attention when I got home. I got a big bowl of
chocolate ice cream and all the Oreos I could eat. Dad called me “pal” and
“partner” with just about every breath. Even Rebel almost licked my face off.
I had been delivered from the wilderness, and I was okay.
Of course they wanted to hear about my adventure, and they pressed me to
tell them more about the girl who had treated my thorn scrapes. I told them
her name, that she was sixteen years old, and that she was as beautiful as
Cinderella in that Walt Disney movie. “I do believe our pal’s got himself a
crush on her,” Dad said to Mom, and he grinned. I said, “Awww, I don’t have
time for any old girl!”
But I fell asleep on the sofa with a dime in my hand.
Before the sun set on Saturday afternoon, Sheriff Amory dropped by. He
had been to see Davy Ray and Ben; now it was my turn to be questioned. We sat
on the front porch, Rebel sprawled beside my chair and occasionally lifting
his head to lick my hand, while in the distance thunder grumbled amid the
darkening clouds. He listened to my story about the wooden box, and when I
came to the part about the masked men being Mr. Dick Moultry and Mr. Gerald
Hargison, he said, “Why do you think it was them, Cory, if you couldn’t see
their faces?”
“’Cause Biggun Blaylock called the fat one Dick and I saw the cheroot Mr.
Hargison threw away and that’s what he smokes, the kind with the white plastic
tip.”
“I see.” He nodded, his long-jawed face betraying no emotion. “You know,
there are probably a lot of fellas around here who smoke cheroots like that.
And just ’cause Biggun Blaylock called a man by his first name doesn’t mean it
was Dick Moultry.”
“It was them,” I said. “Both of them.”
“Davy Ray and Ben told me they didn’t know who the masked men were.”
“Maybe they don’t, sir, but I do.”
“All right, then, I’ll make sure I find out where Dick and Gerald were
’round about eleven last night. I asked Davy Ray and Ben if they could take me
to where this thing happened, but they said they couldn’t find it again. Could
you?”
“No sir. It was near a trail, though.”
“Uh-huh. Trouble is, there are an awful lot of old loggin’ roads and
trails cut through those hills. You didn’t happen to see what was inside that
box, did you?”
“No sir. Whatever it was, Mr. Hargison said it was gonna make some people
tap-dance in hell.”
Sheriff Amory’s brow furrowed. His black eyes held a spark of renewed
interest. “Now, why do you think he’d say somethin’ like that?”
“I don’t know. But Biggun Blaylock would. He said he threw an extra one
into the box.”
“An extra what?”
“I don’t know that, either.” I watched lightning flicker on the horizon
from sky to earth. “Are you gonna find Biggun Blaylock and ask him?”
“Biggun Blaylock,” the sheriff said, “is an invisible man. I hear about
him, and I know the things he and his sons do, but I never see him. I think
he’s got a hideout somewhere in the woods, probably pretty close to where you
boys were.” He watched the lightning, too, and he wound the fingers of his big
hands together and worked his knuckles. “If I could ever catch one of his sons
at some mischief, maybe I could smoke Biggun out. But to tell you the truth,
Cory, the sheriff’s office in Zephyr is pretty much a one-man operation. I
don’t get a whole lot of money from the county. Heck,” he said, and he smiled
thinly, “I only got this job ’cause nobody else would have it. My wife’s on me
all the time to give it up, says I oughta go back into the house-paintin’
business.” He shrugged. “Well,” he said, dismissing those thoughts, “a whole
lot of people around here are scared of the Blaylocks. Especially of Biggun. I
doubt I could deputize more than five or six men to help me comb the woods for
him. And by the time we found him—if we ever did—he’d have known we were
comin’ long before we got there. See my problem, Cory?”
“Yes sir. The Blaylocks are bigger than the law.”
