第 9 页

I found my friend Dewayne Pinter trying to convince his mother that he should be free to roam. Dewayne was a year older than I was but still in the second grade. His father let him drive their tractor around the farm, and this elevated his status among all second graders at the Black Oak School. The Pinters were Baptists and Cardinals fans, but for some unknown reason, Pappy still didn’t like them.

“Good afternoon, Luke,” Mrs. Pinter said to me.

“Hello, Mrs. Pinter.”

“Where’s your mother?” she asked, looking behind me.

“I think she’s still at the drugstore. I’m not sure.”

With that, Dewayne was able to tear himself away. If I could be trusted to walk the streets alone, then so could he. As we walked off, Mrs. Pinter was still barking instructions. We went to the Dixie, where the older kids were hanging out and waiting for four o’clock. In my pocket I had a few coins-five cents for the matinee, five cents for a Coca-Cola, three cents for popcorn. My mother had given me I he money as an advance against what I would earn picking cotton. I was supposed to pay it back one day, but she and I both knew it would never happen. If Pappy tried to collect it, he would have to step around Mom.

Evidently Dewayne had had a better week with the cotton than I had. He had a pocket full of dimes and couldn’t wait to show them off. His family also rented land, and they owned twenty acres outright, a lot more than the Chandlers.

A freckle-faced girl named Brenda lingered near us, trying to start a conversation with Dewayne. She’d told all of her friends that she wanted to marry him. She was making his life unbearable by following him around at church, shadowing him every Saturday up and down Main Street, and always asking if he would sit by her at the movies.

Dewayne despised her. When a pack of Mexicans walked by, we got lost in the middle of them. A fight erupted behind the Co-op, a popular spot for the older boys to gather and trade punches. It happened every Saturday, and nothing electrified Black Oak like a good fight. The crowd pushed its way through a wide alley next to the Co-op, and in the rush I heard someone say, “I’ll bet it’s a Sisco.”

My mother had warned me against watching fights behind the Co-op, but it wasn’t a strict prohibition because I knew she wouldn’t be there. No proper female would dare to be caught watching a fight. Dewayne and I snaked our way through the mob, anxious to see some violence. The Siscos were dirt-poor sharecroppers who lived less than a mile from town. They were always around on Saturday. No one was sure how many kids were in the family, but they could all fight. Their father was a drunk who beat them, and their mother had once whipped a fully armed deputy who was trying to arrest her husband. Broke his arm and his nose. The deputy left town in disgrace. The oldest Sisco was in prison for killing a man in Jonesboro.

The Sisco kids didn’t go to school or church, so I managed to avoid them. Sure enough, when we got close and peeked through the spectators, there was Jerry Sisco punching a stranger in the face. “Who’s that?” I asked Dewayne. The crowd was yelling for each fighter to hurry up and maim the other.

“Don’t know,” Dewayne said. “Probably a hillbilly.”

That made sense. With the county full of hill people picking cotton, it was only logical that the Siscos would start a fight with someone who didn’t know them. The locals knew better. The stranger’s face was puffy, and there was blood dripping from his nose. Jerry Sisco ripped a sharp right to his teeth and knocked the man down.

A whole gang of Siscos and their ilk were in one corner, laughing, and probably drinking. They were shaggy and dirty with ragged clothes and only a few had shoes. Their toughness was legendary. They were lean and hungry and fought with every dirty trick in the hook. The year before, Billy Sisco had almost killed a Mexican in a fight behind the gin.

On the other side of the makeshift arena was a group of hill people, all-yelling for their man- “Doyle,” it turned out-to get up and do something. Doyle was rubbing his chin when he jumped up and made a charge. He managed to ram his head into Jerry Sisco’s stomach, sending both of them to the ground. This brought a cheer from the hill people. The rest of us wanted to cheer, too, but we didn’t want to upset the Siscos. This was their game, and they’d come after anybody.

The two fighters clutched and clawed and rolled around in the dirt like wild animals, as the yelling got louder. Doyle suddenly cocked his right hand and landed a perfect punch in the middle of Jerry Sisco’s face, sending blood everywhere. Jerry was still for a split second, and we were all secretly hoping that perhaps a Sisco had met his match. Doyle was about to land another punch when Billy

Sisco abruptly charged from the pack and kicked Doyle square in the back. Doyle shrieked like a wounded dog and rolled to the ground, where both Siscos were immediately on him, kicking and pounding him.

Doyle was about to be slaughtered. Though there was nothing fair about it, it was simply the risk you ran if you fought a Sisco. The hill people were silent, and the locals watched without taking a step forward.

Then the two Siscos dragged Doyle to his feet, and with all the patience of an executioner, Jerry kicked him in the groin. Doyle screamed and dropped to the ground. The Siscos were delirious with laughter.

The Siscos were in the process of picking him up again when Mr. Hank Spruill, he of the tree-trunk neck, stepped out from the crowd and hit Jerry hard, causing him to fall. Quick as a cat, Billy Sisco threw a left jab that popped Hank in the jaw, but a curious thing happened. The jab didn’t phase Hank Spruill. He turned around and grabbed Billy by his hair and without any apparent effort spun him around and flung him into the grouping of Siscos in the crowd. From the strewn pack came a new Sisco, Bobby, aged no more than sixteen, but just as mean as his brothers.

Three Siscos against Hank Spruill.

As Jerry was getting to his feet, Hank, with unbelievable speed, kicked him in the ribs so hard that we heard cracking. Then Hank turned and slapped Bobby with the back of his hand, knocking him down, and kicked him in the teeth. By this time Billy was making another lunge, and Hank, like a circus strongman, lifted the much skinnier boy into the air and flipped him into the side of the Coop, where he crashed loudly, rattling the boards and windows, before falling to the pavement on his head. I couldn’t have tossed a baseball any easier.

When Billy hit the ground, Hank took him by the throat and dragged him back into the center of the arena, where Bobby was on all fours, struggling to get to his feet. Jerry was crumpled to one side, clutching his ribs and whimpering.

Hank kicked Bobby between the legs. When the boy yelped, Hank let out a hideous laugh. He then clutched Billy by the throat and began lashing his face with the back of his right hand. Blood was spurting everywhere; it covered Billy’s face and was pouring down his chest. Finally, Hank released Billy and turned to the rest of the Siscos. “Anybody want some more!” he shouted. “Come on! Get you some!”

The other Siscos cowered behind one another while their three heroes floundered in the dirt. The fight should’ve been over, but Hank had other plans. With delight and deliberation, he kicked each of the three in their faces and heads until they stopped moving and groaning. The crowd began to disperse.

“Let’s go,” a man said from behind me. “You kids don’t need to see this.” But I couldn’t move. Then Hank found a broken piece of an old two-by-four. For a moment the crowd stopped its exit to watch with morbid curiosity.

When Hank hit Jerry across the nose, someone in the crowd said, “Oh my God.”

Another voice in the mob said something about finding the sheriff.

“Let’s get outta here,” an old farmer said, and the crowd began leaving again, this time a little quicker.

Hank still wasn’t finished. His face was red with anger; his eyes flashed like a demon’s. He kept pounding them until the old two-by-four began to shatter into small pieces.

I didn’t see any of the other Spruills in the crowd. As the beating became a butchering, everyone fled. No one in Black Oak wanted to tangle with the Siscos. And now nobody wanted to face this madman from the hills.

When we were back on the sidewalk, those of us who’d seen the fight were silent. It was still happening. I wondered if Hank would beat them until they were dead.

Neither Dewayne nor I said a word as we darted through the crowd and ran toward the movie house.

The Saturday afternoon movie was a special time for all of us farm kids. We didn’t have televisions, and entertainment was considered sinful. For two hours we were transported from the harshness of life in the cotton patch to a fantasy land where the good guys always won. Through the movies we learned how criminals operated, how cops caught them, how wars were fought and won, how history was made in the Wild West. It was even through a movie that I learned the sad truth that the South had, in fact, not won the Civil War, contrary to what I’d been told both at home and at school. But this Saturday the Gene Autry western bored Dewayne and me. Every time there was a fistfight on the screen, I thought of Hank Spruill and could see him still out there behind the Co-op hammering the Siscos. Autry’s scuffles were tame compared to the real-life carnage we’d just witnessed. The movie was almost over before I mustered the courage to tell Dewayne.

“That big hillbilly we saw beat the Siscos?” I whispered. “He’s working on our farm.”

“You know him?” he whispered back, disbelieving.

“Yep. Know him real well.”

Dewayne was impressed and wanted to ask more questions, but the place was packed and Mr. Starnes, the manager, enjoyed patrolling the aisles with his flashlight, just looking for trouble. Any kid caught talking would be yanked up by the ear and ejected. Also, Brenda with the freckles had managed to get the seat directly behind Dewayne, making us both uncomfortable.

There were a few adults sprinkled throughout the audience, but they were mostly town people. Mr. Starnes made the Mexicans sit in the balcony, but it didn’t seem to bother them. Only a handful would waste money on a picture show.

We rushed out at the end, and within minutes we were behind the Co-op again, half-expecting to see the bloody corpses of the Sisco boys. But no one was there. There was no evidence of any fight-no blood, no limbs, no shattered two-by-four.

Pappy held the opinion that people with self-respect should leave town on Saturday before dark. Bad things happened on Saturday night. Other than the fights, though, I’d never witnessed any true evil. I’d heard there were drinking and dice games behind the gin, and even more fights, but all that was kept out of sight and was engaged in by very few people. Still, Pappy was afraid we’d somehow be contaminated.

Ricky was the hell-raiser of the Chandler family, and my mother told me that he had the reputation of staying in town too long on Saturday. There was an arrest somewhere in the recent family history, but I could never get the details. She said that Pappy and Ricky had fought for years over what time they should leave. I could remember several occasions when we left without him. I’d cry because I was sure I’d never see him again, then Sunday morning he would be sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee as if nothing had happened. Ricky always came home.

We met at the truck, which was now surrounded by dozens of other vehicles parked haphazardly around the Baptist church because the farmers were still rolling in. The crowd was thicker along Main Street and seemed to be congregating near the school, where fiddlers and banjo pickers sometimes broke out into bluegrass sessions. I didn’t want to leave, and in my opinion there was no hurry to get home.

Gran and my mother had some last-minute business inside the church, where most of the women found something to do on the day before the Sabbath. From the other side of the truck, I overheard my dad and Pappy talking about a fight. Then I heard the name Sisco, and I became very still. Miguel and some of the Mexicans arrived and wouldn’t stop chattering in Spanish, so I missed any further gossip.

A few minutes later, Stick Powers, one of Black Oak’s two deputies, walked over from the street and said hello to Pappy and my father. Stick was supposed to have been a POW in the war, and he walked with a limp, which he claimed was the result of abuse in a German camp. Pappy said he’d never left Craighead County, never heard a shot fired in anger.

“One of them Sisco boys is near ‘bout dead,” I heard him say as I moved in closer. It was almost dark now, and no one was watching me.

“Nothing wrong with that,” Pappy said.

“They say that hillbilly is working out at your place.”

“I didn’t see the fight, Stick,” Pappy said, his quick temper already rising. “You got a name?” “Hank something or other.”

“We got lots of somethings and others.”

“Mind if I ride out tomorrow and look around?” Stick asked.

“I can’t stop you.”

“No, you can’t.” Stick wheeled on his good leg and gave the Mexicans a look as if they were guilty as sin.

I eased around to the other side of the truck and said, “What was that all about?”

As usual, when it was something I was not supposed to know or hear, they simply ignored me. We rode home in the dark, the lights of Black Oak fading behind us, the cool wind from the road blowing our hair. At first, I wanted to tell my father about the fight, but I couldn’t do it in front of the Mexicans. Then I decided not to be a witness. I wouldn’t tell anybody since there was no way to win. Any involvement with the Siscos would make my life dangerous, and I didn’t want the Spruills to get mad and leave. The picking had hardly begun, and I was already tired of it. And most important, I didn’t want Hank Spruill angry with me or my father or Pappy.

Their old truck was not in our front yard when we arrived home. They were still in town, probably visiting with other hill people.

After supper, we took our places on the porch as Pappy fiddled with his radio. The Cardinals were at Philadelphia, playing under the lights. Musial came to bat in the top of the second, and I began to dream.

Chapter 8

We awoke at dawn Sunday to the crack of lightning and the rumble of low thunder. A storm blew from the southwest, delaying sunrise, and as I lay in the darkness of Ricky’s room, I again asked the great question of why it rained on Sundays. Why not during the week, so I wouldn’t be forced to pick cotton? Sunday was already a day of rest.

My grandmother came for me and told me to sit on the porch so we could watch the rain together. She fixed my coffee, mixing it with plenty of milk and sugar, and we rocked gently in the swing as the wind howled. The Spruills were scurrying about, throwing things in boxes, trying to find shelter away from their leaking tents.