By Bizarre Hands (23 page)

Before we climbed up on the wagon, Mrs. Onin said, "He'd been yelling all morning from upstairs, saying how an angel from God wearing a suit coat and a top hat, had brought him a message he was supposed to pass on. Kept sayin' the angel was giving him a test, see if he deserved heaven after what he done to that little girl."

Papa went ahead and climbed on the wagon, took hold of the lines. With his head, he motioned me up.

"Then we didn't hear nothing no more," Mr. Onin said. "I went up there to check on him and he'd pulled the bars out of one of the windows and got out. I don't reckon how he did that, as he'd never been able to do it before, and them bars was as sturdy as the day I put them in, no rotten wood around the sills or nothing."

Papa had taken out his pocket knife and tobacco bar, and he was cutting him a chaw off it. "Reckon you went right then to the sheriff to tell him your boy run off,'' Papa said, and there was that edge to his voice, like when he finds me peeing out back too close to the house.

"Naw," Mr. Onin said looking at the ground. "I didn't. Figured cold as he was, he'd come on back."

"Don't matter none now, does it?" Papa said.

"No," Mr. Onin said. "He's out of his misery now."

"Thems as true a words as you've spoke," Papa said.

"I'll be getting your sheet back to you," Mr. Onin said.

"Don't want it," Papa said. He clucked up the mules and we started off.

When we were out of earshot of the house, I said, "Papa, you really think they thought that crazy feller would go back because it was cold?"

"Why in hell would he want to go back to that attic? I don't reckon it was all that warm. I figure they thought he'd freeze and they'd be rid of him."

We
didn't say anything else until we got home, then wasn't none of the talking about the madman or the Onins. Mama didn't even mention it after she saw Papa's face.

Just before supper, Papa went out on the porch to smoke his pipe, and I went out to the barn to toss the mules and milk cow some hay. I was out there tossing and smelling that animal smell, thinking how it reminded me of my whole life, that smell. Reminded me of Mama and Papa, warm nights with very little breeze, cold nights with the fire stoked up big and warm, late suppers, tall tales in front of the fireplace, standing on the porch or looking out the windows at the morning, noon or night, spring, summer, winter or fall. And that smell, always there, like a friend who had on some peculiar, if not bad smelling, toilet water. It was in the floorboards of the house, in the yard, thick in the barn. A smell that even now moves me backwards and forwards in time.

So there I was, throwing hay, thinking this fine life would go on forever, and all of a sudden I felt it before it happened.

I quit tossing hay, turned to look out the barn door. It was like I was looking at a painting, things had gone so still. The sky had turned yellow. The late birds quit singing and the mules and the milk cow turned their heads to look out of doors too.

Way off I heard it, a sound like a locomotive making the grade, burning that timber. Only there wasn't a track within ten miles of us. Outside the sky went from yellow to black, from still to windy. Pine straw, dust, and all manner of things began whipping by. I knew what was happening: twister.

I dropped the pitchfork, dove for the inside of an old shovel scoop mule sled, and no sooner had I hit face down and put my hands over my head, then it hit.

I caught a glimpse of a cow flying by, legs splayed like she thought she could stop the tug of the wind easy as she could stop the tug of a rope. Then the cow was gone and the sled started to move.

After that, everything started happening so quickly I'm not certain what I saw. Lots of things flying by, and I
could
hardly breathe. The sled might have gone as high as thirty feet, 'cause when I came down it was hard. Hadn't been for the ice, I'd probably have been driven into the ground like a cork in a bottle. But the sled hit the ice and started sliding, throwing up dirty, hard snow on either side of me. Ice pieces hit me in the face, then the sled fetched up against something solid, a stump probably, and I went flying out of it, hit the ice, whirled around and around, came to rest in that ditch where I'd found the madman.

I passed out for a while, and I dreamed. Dreamed I was in the sled again, flying through the air, and there was our house, lifting up from the ground, floor and all. It flew right past me, rising fast. In the brief instant it moved in front of me, I saw Mama. She was standing at the window. All the glass was blown out, and she was clinging to the sill with both hands. Her eyes were as big and blue as her china saucers, and her red hair had come undone and was blowing and whipping around her like a brush fire.

The house shot on up, and when I looked up to see, there wasn't nothing but whirling blackness with little chunks of wood and junk disappearing into it.

"Mama," I said, and I must have said it a lot of times, 'cause that's what woke me up. The sound of my voice calling Mama.

I tried to stand, but my ankle wasn't having it. It hurt like hell, and when I looked down, I saw my boot and sock had been ripped off by the blow, and the ankle was as big as a coiled cottonmouth snake.

I put a hand on the edge of the ditch, dug my fingers through the ice and pulled myself up, taking some of the skin off my naked foot as I did. It was so cold the flesh had frozen to the ground and it had peeled off when I moved, like sweetgum bark.

Once I was out of the ditch, I started crawling across the ice, dragging my useless foot behind me. Little chunks of skin came off my palms, so I had to get down and pull myself forward on my coat-sleeved forearms.

I hadn't gone far before I found Papa. He was sitting in his rocking chair, and in one hand he held his pipe and it was still smoking. The porch the chair had been sitting on
was
gone, but Papa was rocking gently in what remained of the wind. And the pitchfork I'd tossed before diving into the sled was sticking out of his chest like it had growed there. I didn't see a drop of blood. His eyes were open and staring, and every time that chair rocked forward, he seemed to look and nod at me.

Behind Papa, where the house ought to have been, wasn't nothing. It was like it hadn't never been built. I quit crawling and started crying. Did that till there wasn't nothing in me to cry, and the cold started making me so numb I just wanted to lay there and freeze at Papa's feet like an old dog. I felt like if I wasn't his killer, I was at least a helper, having tossed down the very pitchfork that had murdered him.

It started to rain little ice pellets, and somehow the pain of those things pounding on me, gave me the will to crawl toward a heap of hay that had been tossed there by the wind. By the time I got to the pile and looked back, Papa wasn't rocking no more. Those runners had froze to the ground and his black hair had turned white from the ice that had stuck to him.

I worked my way into the hay and tried to pull as much of it over me as I could. Doing that wore me out, and I fell asleep wondering about Mama, wondering what had happened to her, hoping she was alive.

The wind picked up again, took most of my hay away, but by then I didn't care. I awoke remembering that I'd had that dream about Mama and the house again. Even though I didn't have much hay on me, it didn't seem so cold anymore. I figured it was either warming up, or I was getting used to it. Course, wasn't neither of them things. I was freezing to death, and would have too, if not for Mr. Parks and his boys.

Mr. Parks was our nearest neighbor, about three miles east. It turned out he had been chopping wood when the sky turned yellow. Later he told me about it, and he said it was as strange as a blue-eyed hound dog, and unlike any twister he'd ever seen. Said the yellow sky went black, then this dark cloud grew a tail and came a-wagging out of the sky like a happy pup, the tail getting thicker as it
dipped.
When it touched down he figured the place it hit was right close to our farm, so he hitched up a wagon and came on out.

It was slow go for him and his two boys, on account of the ice and them having to stop now and then to clear the road of blown over trees. But they made it to our place about dark, and Mr. Parks said first thing he saw was Papa in that rocker. He said it was like the stem of Papa's pipe was pointing to where I lay, half in, half out of some hay.

They figured me for dead at first, I looked so bad. But when they saw I was alive, they loaded me in the wagon, covered me in some old feed sacks and a couple half-wet blankets and started out of there.

Turned out that foot of mine was broke bad. The doctor came out to the Parks place, set it, and didn't charge me a cent. He said he owed Papa from last fall for a bushel of taters, but I knew that was just a friendly lie. Doc Ryan hadn't never owed nobody nothing.

Mr. and Mrs. Parks offered me a place to stay after the funeral, but I told them I'd go back to our place and try to make a go of it there.

Johnny Parks, who used to whip the hell out of me twice a week on them weeks when we both managed to go a full week to school, made me a pair of solid crutches out of hickory, and I went to Papa's funeral on them. Mama, as if there was something to my dream, wasn't never found, and for that matter, they couldn't hardly find no pieces of the house. There was plenty of barn siding around, but of the house there was only a few floorboards, some wood shingles and some broken glass. Maybe it's silly, but I like to think that old storm just come and got her and hauled her off to a better place, like that little old gal in that book
The Wizard of Oz.

Mr. Parks made Papa a tombstone out of a piece of river slate, chiseled some nice words on it:

HERE LIES HAROLD FOGG,

KILT BY A TORNADER,

AND HERE LIES THE MEMRY OF GLENDA FOGG

WHO WAS CARRIED OFF BY

THE
SAME TORNADER

AND WASN'T NEVER FOUND.

NOT EVEN THE PIECES.

Beneath that was some dates on when they was born and died, and a line about them being survived by one son, Buster Fogg, meaning me, of course.

Over the protest of Mr. and Mrs. Parks, I had them take me out to the place and I set me up a tent there. They left me a lot of food and some hand-me-down clothes from their boys, then they went off saying they'd be back to check on me right regular. Mr. Parks even offered me some money and the loan of his mule, but I said I had to think on it.

This tent Mr. Parks had given me was a good one, and I managed to get around well enough on my crutches to gather barn siding and use what tools I could find to build a floor in it. I could have got Mr. Parks and his boys to do that for me, but I couldn't bring myself to ask them to, not after all they'd done. And besides, I had my pride. Matter of fact, that was about all I had right then. That and the place.

Well, it took me a couple of days what should have taken a few hours, but I got the tent fixed up real good and cozy finally. But it wasn't no replacement for the house and Mama and Papa. I'd have even liked to have heard them fussing over how much firewood Papa should have laid in, which was one of them things he was always a little lazy on, and was finally glad to pass most of the job along to me. I could just imagine Mama telling him as she looked at the last few sticks of stove wood, "I told you so."

On the morning after I'd spent my first night on my finished floor, I got out to take a real good look at things, and see what I could manage on crutches.

There were dead chickens lying all about, like feather dusters, pieces of wood and one mule lying on his back, legs sticking up in the air like a table blowed over.

Well, wasn't none of this something I hadn't already seen, but now with the flooring in, and my immediate
comfort
attended to, I found I just couldn't face picking up dead chickens and burning a mule carcass.

I went back inside the tent and felt sorry for myself, as that's all there was to do in there, besides eat, and I'd done that till I was about to pop. I didn't even have a book to reread, as all them had got blowed away with the house.

About a week went by, and I'd maybe got half the chickens picked up and tossed off in the ditch by the woodlot, and gotten the mule burned to nothing besides bones, when this slick-looking feller in a buckboard showed up.

"Howdy, young feller," he said, climbing down from his rig. "You must be Buster Fogg."

I admitted I was, and up close I saw that snazzy black suit and narrow brim hat he had on were even snappier than they'd looked from a distance. The hat and suit were as black as fresh charcoal and the pants had creases in them sharp enough to cut your throat. And the feller was all smiles. He looked to have more teeth than Main Street had bricks.

"Glad I caught you home," he said, and he took off his hat and held it over his chest as if contemplating a prayer.

"Whatsit I can do for you?" I asked. "Maybe you'd like to come in the tent, get out of this cold."

"No, no. What I have to say won't take but a moment. My name is Purdue. Jack Purdue. I'm the banker from town."

Well, right off I knew what it was and I didn't want to hear it, but I knew I was going to anyway.

"Your father's bill has come due, son, and I hate it something awful, and I know it's a bad time and all, but I'm going to need that money by about. . . ," he stopped for a moment to look generous, " . . . say noon tomorrow. Least half."

"I ain't got a penny, Mr. Purdue," I said. "Papa had the money, but everything got blowed away in the storm. If you could just give some time—"

He put his hat on and looked real sad about things, almost like it was his farm he was losing.

"I'm afraid not, son. It's an awful duty I got, but it's my duty."

I
told him again about the money blowing away, how Papa had saved it up from selling stuff during the farm season, doing odd jobs around and all, and that I could do the same, providing he gave my leg time to heal so I could get a job. Just to work on his sympathy some, I then went on to tell him the whole horrible truth about how Papa was killed and Mama blowed away like so much outhouse paper, and when I got through I figured I'd told it real good, 'cause his eyes looked a little moist.