A Far Piece to Canaan (7 page)

I talked about it with Fred too. He didn't figure it was the Devil at all but was the ghost of old Collins. He said he thought about it being a person but they'd have to be crazy and mean, and that there were only two crazy men around and one of them was Uncle Lex, and he was so old and blind he couldn't do all the stuff had been done, and besides he wudn't mean. The other was Red Bill Rogers, who was crazy and mean but had a stove-up leg and couldn't climb the cliffs. The more I thought about it, the more I figured Fred was probably right. It bothered me though that there were tracks, because I had never heard of ghost tracks.

To be on the safe side, I decided to ask LD how you made a cross. He gave me the measurements and told me to make it out of pine 'cause that's what the wood was in theirs. I said it made more sense to make it out of oak because it would last a lot longer but he said it ought to be pine because all the crosses he'd ever seen was pine.

I got on it that same day. The closest pine thicket was on Mr. Mac's place and I traipsed over carrying Mom's sewing machine tape, a handsaw, a hammer, nails, and a butcher knife for barking. Pretty soon, I had two sticks and it wudn't nothing to nail them together. It was a good cross, boy. Trouble was it was sticky, being fresh-cut pine. No matter how much dust I rubbed it with to cut the stickiness, it was sticky again in no time. Sticky like that, I couldn't put it in bed with me. I couldn't put it under the bed either because Mom might see it, so I put it between the springs. I had some trouble with the pine smell because Mom couldn't figure where it was coming from. I told her I'd been fooling around with pine and that was probably it. The cross worked great and in a few days I felt safe.

It was a fine summer. Fred and me fished a lot and every now and then Lonnie and LD come down. Everything would've been perfect except Fred and me didn't have slingshots. Something always come up that kept Dad from going to see his friend Ike. Lonnie and LD had their slingshots from the year before, and Fred was getting down in the dumps because we didn't have anything to shoot. Finally, one Sunday, Dad said he had to go to see Ike about a heifer and promised to ask about an inner tube. What he brought home was a beauty.

I had told Fred that Dad was going to see Ike the day before and when I got to the barbwire gap to tell him about the tube, he saw me and we started running toward each other, me yelling, “I got it! I got it! Whole inner tube. Grade A shapes.”

“Hot dog! Whooee!” he yelled, and it was like light shot out over his face.

“You got all th' other stuff?” I asked.

Fred started pulling pieces of rawhide and yellow Bull Durham twine out of every pocket. “Got it all 'ceptin' th' handles and we'll cut some elm for them.”

“Where'd you get that much twine?” I asked.

“Pa and Uncle Charlie was a-savin' hit for me 'bout six months now. That's a purty good lot of smokin', six months.”

“How come we got to use that? We got lots of white string at th' house.”

Fred shook his head. “Hun'ney, white string ain't no good. Always use Bull Durham twine for slingshot bindin'. You make five, six wraps with Bull Durham twine and hit'll stay 'til th' cows come home.” He cocked his hands like he was holding a slingshot and said, “Bam, got that big old frog right between th' eyes,” then he jumped up in the air and flopped down flat on his back with his head to the side and tongue hanging out. I flopped down too, and we laughed like fools and rolled around on the grass. In a few minutes, we stopped and set up.

“Well?” I said, waiting for him to make the next move.

He didn't though. He just kind of grinned. Then he jumped up. “Well? Well's a hole in th' ground. Hun'ney, let's git t' work!” And we struck out for an elm thicket.

On the way to the thicket we went around a low rim of the volcano hill. It was too steep to plow and was used mostly as a sheep pasture, and like any sheep pasture it was full of little paths about a foot wide. Sheep paths are all alike. Nothing grows on them, not even Bermuda and it'll grow out of rock. This part of the trip was nice since the path was covered with fine dust that we could drag our bare feet in. Fred was feeling great, and come on singing.

Get out th' way, ole Dan Tucker
.

Hit's too late for t' get your supper
.

Get out th' way, ole Dan Tucker
.

Hit's too late for t' get your supper
.

Now, ole Dan Tucker was a nice ole man
.

Warshed his face in a fryin' pan
.

Combed his head with a wagon wheel
.

And died with a toothache in his heel
.

When we got to the thicket, Fred started checking trees for handles. He wouldn't use just any forked limb, it had to be a perfect Y and that ain't easy to find. It took us forever to get just what he wanted and I thought I'd go buggy. Then we had to bark them. Elm bark don't come off easy and you cut a little too deep you're back hunting forks, so it took a couple more hours just to skin them and cut the grooves around the top. Once we had that done we cut rubber strips about a half-inch wide from the inner tube and tied them over the grooves in the handles with the Bull Durham twine. We made the loaders out of some soft rawhide. Boy, they were pretty. Fred loaded up a rock and took aim at a fence post. Bam! He hit it, leaving a dent in the split locust log. I didn't do so hot, but managed to hit the post third time around.

“Bet you never been a-froggin', have you, hun'ney?” Fred said, grinning at me.

“Not with slingshots,” I said.

Fred cocked his head. “Well, that's just what we're gonna do. I been watchin' around th' pond and hit's got th' best crop of bullfrogs in years. Let's go!

“You ever eat frog legs?” Fred asked as we walked.

“No.”

“Well, hun'ney, they're good, but you got to keep a tight lid on when you fry 'em.”

“How come?” I asked, stopping to pick a nettle out of my heel.

“'Cause they'll jump right outta th' skillet's why.”

“Aw.”

“Yeah, I ain't a-lyin'. When your ma fixes them she better put a lid on or they'll come right out on th' floor.”

It sounded like a tall story, but Fred had never lied to me. “They taste good?”

“Oh, little like chicken. We ain't had a good mess of frog legs this year 'cause I didn't have a slingshot. Pa's been a-workin' so hard. I'd like to bring him home a mess.”

“You can have mine today,” I said, wondering if frog legs was kosher. I felt sorry for our dads because they had been working so hard. When Alfred did find a day off, he'd have his old radio on, listening to the Cincinnati Reds. Most of the time, though, he just worked terrible hard.

It was almost three before we got to the pond because we had to pick up rocks for ammunition and get a gunnysack. The rocks had to be perfect to suit Fred, of course. When we finally got started, Fred said he'd lead and that I could get the second frog.

“Keep low,” Fred whispered, hunching down. “There's a big one usually sets right in that little nick in th' bank just on th' other side of that willa.”

We hunched down more at the edge of the tree, getting lower and lower until we were on all fours and going so slow and quiet you could hear all sorts of sounds around us. At the spot, Fred put in a load and slowly started getting up like he was afraid his backbone would pop and make noise. Finally, he was standing straight as an arrow. You couldn't even see him breathe. Then he raised the slingshot and pulled back until the rubber got tight, then back some more.

Yurrkkk ker-splot, splot, splot, splot
and I almost jumped out of my skin as the frog shot out over the water making four or five leaps on top before he sank.

“He's a big one,” said Fred. “Half a foot long if he's anything. I'm gonna get him before this day's over,” and he didn't seem put out at all about not getting the frog.

“You figured he'll be waitin' next time around?” I asked.

“They always come back. That's one thing about a frog, he'll always come back to th' same spot, and we'll get him if . . . Hey, looky there,” he said, changing to a whisper.

“I don't see nothin',” I whispered back.

“Right next t' that clump of brush,” and he pointed to a dead limb that stuck out in the water and there next to a twig was the head of a frog. Fred took dead aim and let go. The frog let out a
yurrkkk
and flopped over on his back. He was a big one. Fred picked him up by the hind legs and walked over to a fence post and bam, bam, bam, he bashed its head against the wood until its tongue popped out and it quit wiggling, then dropped him in our gunnysack.

“Hit's your turn, hun'ney,” Fred said, and grinned.

I felt a little scared because frogging idn't like fishing. Fishing's easy once you learn it because all you got to do is get a worm on a hook and wait, but if you're frogging you got one shot and you got to hit or you got nothing. Two hours before, I missed a fence post two times out of three and now I had to hit something about four inches long and three inches wide and I figured wudn't any chance. “You sure you want me to try now? I ain't had any practice.”

“You ain't ever gonna get good if'n you don't try. Hit don't make no difference you miss, we got lots of time.”

“All right, I'll try, but I ain't makin' any promises,” I grumbled, and took off in front.

Yurrkkk, ker-splot, splot, splot
and a big old frog jumped before I moved five feet.

“Hun'ney, you got t' slow down. You ain't a-drivin' sheep.”

“I was goin' slow,” I said, kind of mad. “He heard me, is all.”

“Well, keep low and sneak up.”

“Why don't you get another one and I'll watch,” I said, straightening up.

“You ain't ever gonna learn watchin'. You got to get one or I don't shoot another frog.”

I knew he meant it, so I slumped low and started creeping along. We'd gone about ten feet and my back got a crick. I straightened up a little and something brown-green caught my eye about a foot away. It was a frog that made Fred's look like a midget, just sitting on the mud, looking at a beetle crawling his way. I knew I had to shoot, but my arms felt weak, my heart pounded, and sweat broke out in my palms. Slowly, I raised the slingshot and pulled back on the rubber until my hand was quivering, then WHAM. The frog didn't even
yurrkkk
. He just flattened and lay there, his whole head bashed in.

“You got him, hun'ney!” Fred yelled.

He was a whopper. Must've been king frog in the pond. I felt great, and rolled it up and down my arm feeling the cold, puffy belly, while Fred was telling me how I ought be ashamed of myself saying I couldn't do something when I got the biggest frog in the pond.

That evening, when we headed up the path around the foot of Cummings Hill we had enough frogs to feed the whole Mulligan family, even though I missed more than I hit. When Alfred saw them, he let out a yell. “Mamie, come here and look!” Wudn't half a minute before all the Mulligans was pushed in around us. We laughed and talked for a while, then I took off home feeling great. I'd just started frogging and come up with the biggest frog in the pond. I couldn't wait to tell Dad and Mom. Berman's was really fun.

I
pushed away from the gate and headed back to the car thinking about the joys of my youth, walking again through the area where the stock barn had been. The grass was ankle high and I stumbled over something and fell. When I got up I saw a round knob sticking out of the ground. It was green and worn, but there was no mistaking its identity to a 1940s farm boy. This was part of a workhorse's hames. I grabbed the knob, pulled, and brought up a rotten, curved piece of wood attached to rusted metal. I wondered if I had geared Daisy or Gabe with this relic.

I took a deep breath and tried to imagine the smell of the feed room where we kept the harnesses. A delicious odor, harness oil and cattle feed. Perhaps Fred and I had eaten sweet apples on this very spot, lying on feed sacks and dipping the apples in coarse cattle salt. My childhood friends were reborn nostalgically in my mind. Funny, Mom always worried I'd become like them. In retrospect, I had adopted many of their ways of thinking, especially their straitlaced view of what was expected of a man.

Nora's question about one of my colleagues came to mind when she urged me to make more friends. “What's wrong with Jason Tilden as a friend, Samuel? He's bright and humorous. His wife, Regina, is fun.”

I didn't answer that Jason's lectures were canned, that his creative work peeled back at least three atoms of depth, and that while Regina Tilden was fun and nice, I had accidentally walked in on Jason servicing a coed.

No, what I did was change the subject and use any excuse to bring back the bubbly Nora I loved so much. Why the hell hadn't I told her that I couldn't respect a guy who didn't challenge his work and wasn't faithful to his wife? I wondered if I would rat out Jason Tilden if I could call back those years. I doubted that Fred would have done it, or Lonnie. What Tilden did was unacceptable to them. A man did his best at work and was faithful to his friends and his woman or he wasn't a man.

Thoughts of Fred had ricocheted through my mind for several days following Nora's comment. I wondered where he was, and how he was doing. He had wanted to see me again and I hadn't responded. Had he needed me? I didn't know, but I had found excuses why I couldn't make the time. I had lived most of my adult existence by the creed of these hill people, but I sure as hell hadn't followed it that time. Now I had to face them, face Fred, and it bothered me.

I pitched the hames into the grass and walked to the car thinking about the first time the old barn had made a difference in my life. It was 1945 and . . .