Georgia Boy (14 page)

“We’d better hurry ourselves on home with this corn meal for your Ma,” Handsome said, pulling me by the sleeve. “You know what she said about wanting it to make some spoon bread for supper. You’d better obey your Ma.”

“Let’s wait and see who that is coming up the track in such a hurry,” I told him. “He’s waving at us to wait for him.”

“That’s just some old tramp who’ll take this sack of meal away from us if we don’t hurry and get on home like your Ma told us to do.”

Handsome began backing away. He took the sack off his shoulder and hugged it in both arms.

“You’d better listen to me and pay me mind,” Handsome said. “I know what I’m talking about. I’ve seen plenty of them old tramps before and they don’t ever do nobody any good. That one coming up here ain’t out for no good, I can tell. You’d better come on home like I tell you.”

I waited where I was and in another minute the man got to where we were standing. He had been hurrying so fast he was all out of breath, and when he stopped, all he could do was just stand there and pant until his breath came back. He was about as old as Pa, but he moved around faster than my old man ever did, and he looked sort of wild-eyed and nervous. He was wearing a pair of old overalls that had a long rip down the front of one of the legs which looked as if it had been there a long time and that he had not had time to get it sewn up. There was a brand-new brown cap on the side of his head that looked as if it had just come out of a store somewhere. His shoes were all run-down, though, and I could see his little toes sticking through the cracks. The holes were so large that his shoes looked as though each one was made in two pieces. There was a red and yellow bandana tied around his neck the same way brakemen on the Coast Line freights wore them to keep cinders from getting down their necks. He needed a shave worst of all, because his black whiskers were so long and bristly that they stuck out in all directions like the stickers on a cockleburr.

“Son,” he said, looking at me real hard, “ain’t you Morris Stroup’s boy, William?”

“Yes, sir,” I answered right away, wondering how he knew what my name was. “Yes, sir, that’s me.”

“Where’s your Pa?” he asked. “Where’s he at now?”

“Pa went to the country today to do some work at the farm,” I told him. “When he left, he said he wouldn’t be home till late tonight.”

“I’m your Uncle Ned,” he said, reaching out and getting a good hard grip on my shoulder. “Don’t you know me, son?”

“No, sir,” I said, looking at his black whiskers and twisting my shoulder to keep his grip from hurting so much.

“The last time I was here, you were just a little squirt,” he said, letting me go. “Maybe you were too young to remember your Uncle Ned.”

“I reckon I was,” I told him.

He turned and looked up the street towards our house.

“How’s your Ma these days?” he asked.

“She’s pretty well,” I said, still trying to remember ever seeing him before. Pa had a lot of brothers scattered all over the country, and I had never seen even half of them. Ma said most of Pa’s kin were better off staying where they were and that she did not want any of them coming to visit us. Once I had seen Uncle Stet, who worked on a chain gang off and on, but Ma would not let him come inside our house and after sitting on the front steps for about an hour once he got up and left and I never saw him again after that.

“Who’s that shine standing over there?” Uncle Ned asked, nodding his head at Handsome.

“That’s Handsome Brown, our yard boy,” I told him. “Handsome works around the house when there’s anything to do.”

“I’ll bet he ain’t never done enough work, all told, to earn a day’s board and keep,” Uncle Ned said. “Ain’t that right, boy?”

“I—I—I—” Handsome said, stuttering like he always did when he was scared. “I—I—”

“See?” Uncle Ned said. “What did I tell you? He ain’t even got enough energy to lie about it. All the work that shine’s ever done could be counted up and poured into a thimble. Ain’t that the truth, boy?”

“I—I—I—” Handsome said, backing away.

“He knows it ain’t worth the trouble to lie about,” Uncle Ned said, walking off.

He went about a dozen steps and stopped.

“Which way is the house, son?” he asked me.

“Whose house?” I said.

“Why, your Ma and Pa’s house, son,” he laughed. “You don’t reckon I’d come to town like this and not stop in and pay a call on you folks, do you?”

“Maybe I’d better go home first and tell Ma you’re coming,” I told him. “Ma might not like it if I didn’t go and tell her first.”

“No,” he said right away. “Don’t do that. It wouldn’t be a surprise if she knew all about it beforehand. The best way to surprise somebody is just to walk in when they ain’t expecting you. She might think she’d have to go to a lot of extra trouble if she knew I was coming before I got there.”

I started towards home with Uncle Ned right beside me. Handsome stayed behind and did not try to keep up at all. We crossed over the right-of-way and turned up our street. When we got almost there, I stopped and waited for Handsome to catch up with us.

“Handsome,” I called to him, “you go on first and give Ma the corn meal. Then after that, you can tell her Uncle Ned’s here.”

“I’ll give Mis’ Martha the meal,” Handsome said, walking sideways around Uncle Ned, “but I ain’t so sure about that other thing you told me. You’d better tell her your own self. Mis’ Martha might fly off and put the whole blame on me, and I declare I ain’t had nothing at all to do with it. I don’t want to get mixed up in trouble when it ain’t my fault.”

“What you talking about, nigger!” Uncle Ned said, stooping down and picking up a hand-sized rock. “Don’t you never talk back like that as long as you live! One more peep out of you like that again, and I’ll bash your head in with this rock! You hear me, nigger!”

“I—I—I—” Handsome stuttered.

“And quit that stuttering,” Uncle Ned said. “If there’s one thing in the world I can’t stand, it’s a stuttering nigger.”

Handsome backed away and ran through the gate into the backyard. After he had gone, we walked towards the house and Uncle Ned sat down on the front steps. I didn’t know what to do, because I was afraid he would get mad at me the way he had at Handsome if I did anything he didn’t like. I stood in the yard in front of the steps and waited.

“How big a farm has your Pa got in the country?” he asked me.

“It covers just one fair-sized hill,” I told him. “Pa raised a little corn and some peanuts on it last year, and that’s about all. Pa says he doesn’t have time to spend on it. Handsome Brown does some plowing on it once in a while, and that’s about all.”

“Stroups never were much for farming,” he said.

We waited to find out what Ma was going to do. During all that time there was no sound at all in the house, but that was because I figured Handsome still had not got around to telling Ma about Uncle Ned.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Morris,” he spoke up, “but I don’t reckon he’s changed much since the last time I saw him. How about your Ma, son? Is she about the same as ever?”

“I reckon so,” I told him, listening for her to make some sort of noise when Handsome told her about Uncle Ned.

“To sit here like this in the quiet of the evening you wouldn’t think there was a trouble in the whole world,” Uncle Ned said out loud to himself. “It sure is peaceful.”

I heard a door slam shut somewhere inside the house, and I knew Ma was on her way. I backed down the path away from the steps where Uncle Ned was sitting with his elbows propped up on his knees. In barely any time at all the screen door flew open, and Ma came out on the porch.

“Is that you, Ned Stroup!” she yelled.

Uncle Ned leaped off the steps just as if he had been jabbed with a pitchfork. He landed halfway between me and the porch.

“Now, wait a minute, Martha,” he begged, backing towards me and keeping the same distance between himself and Ma. “I just dropped in to pay a brotherly call on you and Morris. You can’t blame a man from honoring his blood-kin, now can you?”

“Don’t you stand there and try to claim any kin with me, Ned Stroup!” Ma shouted.

“Now, Martha, there ain’t no sense in me and you falling out over a little thing like kinship. I’m a changed man. I’ve had a long time to think things over, and I’ve decided I wasn’t always doing the right thing in life. I turned over a new leaf, Martha.”

“You get yourself out of my yard, Ned Stroup. I’m not paying heed to a single thing you say. I’m saddled by law to one Stroup, but there’s no power in heaven or earth strong enough to force me to put up with two of you Stroups. I’ve got my cross to bear as it is, and I’m not going to let it get any heavier.”

Uncle Ned hung his head and looked down at the ground. He wiggled one of his little toes through the crack in his shoe and stood there looking at it for a long time. All the time he was wiggling his toe, Ma just stood and glared at him.

“Maybe out of the kindness of your heart you could see fit to give me a bite to eat before you send me on my way,” he said slowly, glancing up at Ma from beneath his eyebrows and watching how she took it. “I’m a hungry man, Martha. I ain’t had a solitary bite to eat since early yesterday morning. You wouldn’t want to refuse anybody a bite to eat just so they could stay alive, would you, Martha?”

“When did you get out of the pen this time?” Ma asked quickly.

“Why, only a few days ago,” Uncle Ned said, surprised. “How’d you know I’d been in the pen again, Martha?”

“Where else would anybody in his right mind expect you to be?” she said as quick as that.

Uncle Ned looked down at the ground and wiggled his little toe some more. Ma did not say anything else right away, and all the time she just stood there staring at Uncle Ned. After a while she raised her hand and brushed her eyes when she thought nobody saw what she was doing.

“Come on around to the kitchen door, Ned,” she said. “The Good Lord will never be able to say that I didn’t lend a helping hand, even though I know it’s not the right thing to do. I ought to be calling the town marshal to come and lock you up in the jail.”

She went back inside the house, latching the screen door so Uncle Ned could not follow her through the hall. After she had gone, he got up and walked around the corner of the house to the backyard. When we got there, Handsome was sitting on the kitchen steps; but when he saw Uncle Ned coming towards him, he jumped up and ran across the yard and sat down on the woodpile. I went inside while Ma filled a heaping plate of black-eyed peas and sausage. When it was ready, she handed it to me and nodded towards Uncle Ned outside on the steps.

I took the plate out on the porch and handed it to Uncle Ned. He did not say a word, but he looked up at me the same way Pa did sometimes when he wanted to tell me something but didn’t want to say it in words. I went over to the corner and sat down while he ate the peas and sausage. Presently Ma called me inside and handed me a cup of coffee to give to Uncle Ned.

After I gave him the coffee he took a long sip from the cup and looked up at me again.

“Son,” he said, “always be a good Stroup as long as you live. There’s no finer family in the whole world than us Stroups, and we don’t want nothing to happen that would make folks think we are a common run of humans like everybody else. Us Stroups haven’t got rich like some folks have, and sometimes some of us gets into a little trouble and have to go away for a spell to let things cool off, but taken all in all I don’t believe there’s a finer family anywhere in the country.”

“Yes, sir, Uncle Ned,” I said, wondering what Ma would say if she heard.

“I’m a grown man, son, and I know good sound advice when I hear it. That’s why I want you to remember what I told you about being a good Stroup. There’s not many folks in the world today who can boast of being a Stroup.”

“All right, Uncle Ned,” I told him. “I’ll remember.”

Ma came to the kitchen door and looked out. She watched while Uncle Ned scraped the plate clean.

“Did you have enough to eat, Ned?” she asked him, her voice sounding a lot like it did sometimes when she spoke to my old man in front of company. “If you are still hungry, I can fill your plate again.”

“That’s mighty nice of you, Martha,” he said, turning around and gazing at her wistfully, “and I sure do appreciate what you done for me. I’ll always think kindly of you, Martha, no matter what happens. You treated me like one Stroup to another.”

Just then I looked across the yard and saw Handsome get up from the woodpile in a hurry and back away towards the barn. I was still wondering why he had got up and left in such a hurry when Ben Simons, the town marshal, stepped around the corner of the house with his pistol held out in front of him. He was pointing it straight at Uncle Ned.

“Throw up your hands, Ned Stroup!” Ben shouted. “And don’t you dare make a move for your gun. If you do, I swear to God I’ll drop you dead in your tracks. I ain’t taking no chances with you fellows who are always breaking out of the pen.”

Uncle Ned did not say a word while Ben came forward a step at a time and jerked the long-barreled pistol from the belt under his overalls. He kept his hands raised high over his head and made no move to try to get away.

“What does this mean, Ben Simons?” Ma said, coming out on the porch. “What on earth?”

“In case Ned failed to tell you, ma’m,” Ben said, “he broke out of the pen three days ago and the warden asked the peace officers in the state to track him down. I figured Ned might be coming here to see his brother and get something to eat and a change of clothes, and sure enough he swung off the afternoon freight about an hour ago. I’ve been watching him ever since. Now it’s time to be going, Ned.”

Uncle Ned let Ben put the handcuffs on him without a word, and then he stood up. He turned around and looked at me before he started off towards town.

“Son,” he said, “you just keep on remembering what I said about the Stroups. There’s so many of us in the world nowadays that one of us is apt to get out of hand every now and then, but that don’t mean that the rest of the Stroups ain’t the finest people God ever made. You just go ahead and be a good Stroup like I told you.”