Jim the Boy (2 page)

“I want to use this one,” Jim said.

“I’ll use this one here,” Abraham said. He took the last hoe from the truck bed. Its handle was broken off about halfway down. All the other hoes had been taken already.

“That one’s for Jim,” Uncle Zeno said. He took the new hoe from Jim’s hands. Abraham handed Jim the hoe with the broken handle. Jim knew better than to say anything else.

“Let’s get some hoeing done,” said Uncle Zeno.

“By dinnertime you’ll be glad you’ve got that hoe,” Abraham said. “It’s nice and light.”

Jim was still angry. “I’m ten years old today,” he said.

“My, my,” said Abraham.

Jim walked with the uncles and the field hands through the wet grass to the far end of the bottom. The grass soaked the legs of his overalls; the cloth was cold against his skin. The men fell out of line one by one and arranged themselves two rows apart. Each man would hoe to the end of one row and then back up the other. Then they would walk to the end of the line and take up two more rows. In this way they would hoe the whole field. Jim took up the two rows beside Uncle Zeno.

The corn was knee-high to the uncles, but almost waist-high to Jim. The field contained thirty acres. It would take several days to hoe it all. Then, after the hoeing was completed, Uncle Al would come back with the mules and the cultivator, and plow the middles of the rows. The field would then be free of grass and weeds; the corn could grow without competition. At the end of the summer there would be more to sell and grind into meal and feed to the mules.

Uncle Zeno stepped into Jim’s corn row. Jim’s cheeks flushed. He could feel the field hands watching him.

“You do it like this, Doc,” Uncle Zeno said. “You put the blade of the hoe against the stalk and then pull it toward you. That way you don’t hack the corn down.”

“I know how to hoe,” Jim said.

“Show me,” said Uncle Zeno.

Jim chopped at a small clump of grass. The hoe blade bit cleanly into a cornstalk. The cornstalk fell slowly over, like a tree. Jim heard a field hand laugh.

“That’s one lick,” Uncle Zeno said.

Uncle Zeno had never whipped Jim, but Jim was always afraid that he might. Uncle Zeno kept a running count of the licks he was saving for Jim. He said he had them written down in a book. When Jim did something good, he said he erased a lick or two. Jim figured that most of the time he ran a lick or two short of break-even.

“It’s this hoe,” Jim said. The end of the broken handle was as sharp as the point of a spear.

Uncle Zeno got down on one knee and looked Jim in the face. “Jim,” he said. “I ain’t got time to argue with you about that hoe and listen to excuses. Do you want to help me, or do you want to go home?”

“I want to help you,” Jim said.

“All right, then. Watch.”

Uncle Zeno dragged his hoe sharply across the clump of grass Jim had missed. The grass came up cleanly, and he scraped it into the middle of the row.

“Now you do it.”

Jim scraped up a small sprig of clover. “That’s good,” Uncle Zeno said. “That hoe works after all.”

Uncle Zeno stepped back into his own row. The field hands and Uncle Al were already at work. Uncle Al was slightly ahead of the line. None of the uncles liked to be beaten at anything. Jim didn’t like to lose, either. He decided he would beat Abraham to the far end of the field. Then after dinner Uncle Zeno would give the broken hoe to Abraham. Maybe Uncle Zeno would tell Abraham to go home.

Without looking up, Jim carefully scraped the ground clean around the first ten stalks of corn in his row. He piled the weeds and grass up in neat piles. At the tenth stalk, he ran into a clump of grass that was too tough to dig up with his hoe. He got down on his knees and pulled at it with both hands. It wouldn’t budge. He stuck the sharp point of his hoe handle underneath the grass and pried at it. He pulled and pried at the grass until the roots finally came loose with a ripping noise. Jim hoisted the clump of grass into the air like a trophy, or a large fish. Its roots held a clod of dirt as big as a cat. He looked around to see if anyone saw him, but everyone was gone. He couldn’t see anyone at all until he stood up. The uncles and the field hands were a hundred yards or more ahead of him, and moving away at a slow walk. Uncle Al was out in front of everyone else. Uncle Zeno and Abraham looked to be tied for second.

Jim turned and stared back at the head of his row. He could spit that far. He looked in the other direction at the end of the row in the distance. The woods along the river seemed as far away as the moon. The uncles, as far ahead of Jim as they were, had hoed less than a fourth of the way to the end of the field. Jim didn’t see how he could ever make it to the end of his row, much less hoe the one beside it. He had started a journey he knew he could not finish. He felt a sob gather up in his stomach like a cloud.

That Jim felt like crying made him angry. He attacked the ground with his hoe as if he were killing snakes. He struck almost blindly at the morning glories and grass and clover, but in his fury chopped down another stalk of corn. The sob that had been waiting in his stomach climbed up out of his throat and hung in the air for a second, a small, inconsequential sound, heard only by him.

The uncles and the field hands were still moving away, hoeing as they walked. Jim was afraid he would get into trouble if Uncle Zeno found out he had chopped down another stalk of corn. He could not bear the thought of Uncle Zeno being mad at him. He got down on his knees and dug a small hole with his hands. He stuck the end of the stalk in the hole and filled the hole around it with dirt. Then he patted the dirt around the stalk so that it stood up straight.

Jim picked up his hoe and wiped his nose on the back of his arm. He wiped the back of his arm on the leg of his overalls. He felt calmer. He decided that he would hoe until dinnertime. He couldn’t think of a way to get home until then, but he knew that Uncle Zeno wouldn’t make him come back to the field after dinner if he didn’t want to.

Jim threw a rock toward the place he had started work. He often threw rocks as a way of gauging how far away things were. He wanted to know how far he had hoed. The rock, however, was a little flat and light, and curved off short to one side. Jim hunted around until he found a better rock. Good throwing rocks were hard to find in the rich dirt of the river bottom. He threw four or five more rocks until he was satisfied that he had hoed farther than he could throw a rock. This seemed like progress.

When Jim picked up his hoe, he noticed that it was about the length of a baseball bat. He grasped the handle right above the blade and took a couple of practice swings. He found a suitable hitting rock and tossed it up in the air and swung at it with the handle. Strike one. The hoe blade made swinging the handle awkward. Jim struck out twice before he finally hit the rock. It whizzed off to the right. Foul ball. He hit three more rocks before he got in a satisfactory lick and turned his attention again to the weeds growing in the field.

Jim saw a rock at his feet that looked like an arrowhead. He dug it up with his hoe, but found that the rock was fat and round on the bottom; it only looked like an arrowhead from the top. Jim had found only one arrowhead on his own, but the uncles often brought him the ones they found. Uncle Coran was the best at finding arrowheads. He could hardly walk through a field without picking one up. When Uncle Coran was a boy, he had even found a stone knife. He kept it in a cigar box on the mantel in his bedroom, and wouldn’t give it to Jim. Jim was afraid the uncles would pick up all the arrowheads in the bottoms before he got good at finding them, but Uncle Zeno said there would always be plenty of arrowheads to find. More turned up every time the fields were plowed.

Jim studied the rock in his hand closely. Maybe it had been the start of an arrowhead. He didn’t think so, but he could ask Uncle Coran about it at dinnertime. Uncle Coran knew a lot about how the Indians had lived. Uncle Coran said that Indians had started their fires by hitting two rocks together. Jim scraped together a small pile of dry grass and found another good-sized rock. He held the rocks close above the grass and hit them together until sparks flew off. The sparks, however, did not ignite the grass. Jim could not understand how Indians had been able to start fires like this. Nor did he understand how Indians made canoes out of tree bark, or got close enough to deer to shoot them with bows and arrows. Jim often wished he were an Indian, but thought that being a cowboy would be easier. He couldn’t walk in the woods without making noise, and he couldn’t start a fire by hitting two rocks together. Cowboys at least got to use matches and guns, but they also had to ride bucking bulls. Jim didn’t know if he would ever be brave enough to ride a bull. He began to think he would never be good at anything. The end of the field again seemed farther away than the last time he had looked.

Jim could smell sweat soaking his overalls. He touched the denim covering his thigh with the palm of his hand. The cloth was hot to the touch. Jim squinted up. The sun was small and white; the sky was devoid of color, empty even of clouds and birds. Jim tried to figure out what time it was by looking at the sun. He tried without success until he could no longer see. He could not remember ever being as hot as he was right then. There was a bucket of water in the truck, but Jim knew that you weren’t supposed to drink from it until you had hoed back to the head of the field. The uncles did not believe in wasting steps. The uncles and the field hands had made the turn and were hoeing back toward Jim. They were still a long way off, but Jim knew they would see him if he went to the truck. Two drops of sweat trickled out from under Jim’s hat, and he stood still to see where they went. One drop ran into his eyes, and the other trickled down his cheek. A gnat flew into his mouth. Jim spat it out. He took off his hat and waved it around his face, but could not make the gnats go away.

“What are you doing down there, Doc?” Uncle Zeno asked.

Jim jumped. He had not noticed Uncle Zeno’s shadow cover the ground where he crouched. “I’m looking at this praying mantis,” said Jim.

“Did it bite you?”

“No.”

Jim had knocked the praying mantis off a corn stalk and chopped it in two with his hoe. He was poking at the two pieces with the sharp point of the handle.

“Praying mantises eat other bugs, Jim,” Uncle Zeno said. “If you want to kill something, kill a grasshopper. Grasshoppers eat corn.”

“Yes, sir,” Jim said.

He covered up the two green halves of the praying mantis with dirt. He wondered if in killing it he had added another lick to Uncle Zeno’s list.

“Well,” said Uncle Zeno, “let’s see how you’ve been doing.” He walked back toward the head of Jim’s row, looking at the ground. “You missed a lot of morning glories through here,” he said, scratching at the ground as he walked. “They’ll take over a field if you don’t get ‘em before they get up on the corn.”

Uncle Zeno came to the cornstalk Jim had chopped down and stuck back in the ground. He stood and looked at it a long time. Then he pulled it up and turned around and looked at Jim. Uncle Zeno was extremely tall. Jim had never noticed before exactly how tall.

“What happened to this one here?” Uncle Zeno said.

“I don’t know,” Jim said.

“You don’t know,” said Uncle Zeno,

“No, sir,” said Jim.

“You know it won’t grow now.”

Jim nodded.

“Then why did you stick it back in the ground?”

“I don’t know,” said Jim.

“You don’t know.”

“No.”

Uncle Zeno held the corn stalk up like a scepter, as if seeing it better would help Jim answer his questions.

“Jim, this was just a mistake until you tried to hide it,” he said. “But when you tried to hide it, you made it a lie.”

Jim looked at the front of his overalls. He felt a tear start down his cheek. He snatched at it and hoped that Uncle Zeno hadn’t seen it.

Uncle Zeno threw the cornstalk away from him as if it were a dirty thing, something to be ashamed of.

“Do you lie to me a lot, Jim?”

“No,” Jim said.

“Should I worry about believing the things you tell me? I never have before, but should I start now?”

Jim shook his head. He wasn’t able to say no again.

“What’s the matter?” Uncle Zeno said.

“I don’t feel good,” said Jim.

“Are you sick?”

Jim shrugged.

“Go on home, then,” Uncle Zeno said.

Jim looked down the row toward the river. He suddenly wanted to finish his work.

Uncle Zeno pointed in the direction of town. “Go on,” he said. “If you’re sick, you don’t need to be out in the sun.”

“I think I can make it till dinner,” Jim said.

“No, you go on home and tell your mama you’re sick.”

Jim sent a small whimper out into the air between himself and Uncle Zeno, like a scout in advance of the protest that would follow.

“Go on,” Uncle Zeno said.

From the edge of the road Jim turned around and looked back at the field. Uncle Zeno was hoeing the row Jim had abandoned. The field hands were spread out through the bottom. Uncle Al was still way out in front of everybody else. He was approaching the river for the second time that morning, working as if he would never stop.

An Unexpected Gift

J
IM WALKED
home through the fields and pastures. Along the way he did not try to flush baby rabbits from their hidden beds in the tall grass of the hay field. Nor, when he took off his shoes and waded across the branch, did he search among the stones for gold nuggets, or look beneath the larger rocks for crawdads and spring lizards. Jim particularly liked holding the small lizards in his cupped hands and watching their tiny hearts beat beneath the pale, thin skin of their undersides. And he liked the fierce, snapping claws of the crawdads. But today he simply crossed over to the town side of the creek, put on his shoes, and continued on his way. When he skirted the small clearing in the woods that held the abandoned tenant house where his mother had lived with his father, he didn’t throw rocks onto the tin roof, nor sneak onto the creaky porch for a peek through the dirty windows.