Wicked Temper Part 26

Nottingham was amused also, in his dull sort of way. He lay the frog gigger and wire coil on the table betwixt his two guests.

"Don't you know nothin, boy? You'd scare off the trade. Birds up hyere on Ole Top, ain't yet to see no eight-cylinder stretch buggy."

That was strange, Tizzy thought, since the man had never seen their car. Or so she supposed. Suppose he examined the Packard in his nocturnal wanderings. Yes, of course he did. He wandered all over. Each time he returned, Mr. Nottingham emerged from a different pocket of woods. Did he not?

"What ye got in mind fer them, Bob?" Matthew said, eyeing the coil and gigger.

Nottingham washed his hands at the sink; he pumped, and lathered the gritty palms. "Aw, I might hosstrade a feller, fer some willertar and pounded saltpeter."

"h.e.l.l, what ye gone do with'at?"

"I don't know."

"You want any breakfast?" Tizzy asked. "I could fry an egg."

"Naw. I ain't hongry just yet. Storm took a corner flap off'n the roof. I aim to nail it and clear that brush blowed under the porch."

He drank some coffee then went back outside. His black rooster prowled what was left of a garden. From a small shed on the upslope side of the house, Nottingham took a heavy roll of black roofing paper. He put Matthew to work snagging dead branches and snarled brush from under the house and porch; then Nottingham got a ladder, climbed it, and hammered on the kitchen eaves. This shot the rest of the morning, with Tizzy pa.s.sing tools up to Nottingham, and Matthew doing a p.i.s.s-poor job clearing out the fire hazard underneath. His was sweaty, cramped work and Matthew did not cotton to it. Matthew wasn't quick to elbow crawl deep into his crawls.p.a.ce; widow spiders were known to prefer the dark and damp. Matthew dragged out this ordeal until Nottingham's roof was fast, until their host came down to help the lad finish his itchy task. By early afternoon the sun was highmounted and hotter, so they went inside for a bite.

b.u.t.ton still curled in the closet, like she hadn't slept all night. Robert Lloyd Nottingham opened a can of cold beans and spooned them straight into his mouth.

"I got other business needs tendin," he told them. "Be home directly. Y'all help yerself, they's plenty of grub. Bacon up in the smokehouse."

Just then the mottled hound, Juda, bounded onto the backporch; fresh from the woods, big feet clumping like drums. The black eyes gleamed. He drooled sorghum s...o...b..r and barked.

Nottingham set the can in the sink. s.n.a.t.c.hing his frog gigger and wire, he went out to meet the hound.

"Juda--ho now," he commanded, and the dog reeled, peeling off across the yard, back into the trees. Nottingham turned and spake through the screen. "Back by supper. You might do somethin about them biddys."

"Sure thing Bob. No big deal."

When Bob spake, he meant Matthew and Matthew knew it. Dead chickens had never been far off Tizzy's mind as they'd toiled away the morning, listening to cicadas rise on the heat. Now she pursued Matthew onto the backporch, both watching their host stride slowly, past two burnt trash barrels. Nottingham moved with sluggish rhythm, as if his fleshy muscles ached him; his arms hung limp up the rocky trail before he faded off into pine needles.

"How'uz the car?" she asked, once the man had gone.

"Awright. Only the mud'uz riz up nearly to the fenders. Best git her out soon."

"Matthew...?"

"Yeah mama?"

"I wonder if they're a-lookin fer us still. Down there. I wonder about my daddy and Shonda Gay and all them..."

"Yeah, it's crossed my mind." Matthew scratched. Matthew shot the sun a finger-f.u.c.k.

"And that sheriff we done robbed. Wonder if his kids got enough to eat, er if'n he's a-huntin after us hisself."

"Ain't too likely. Besides, ain't n.o.body gone look fer us up hyere. Leastwise yer daddy."

"I suppose not," she said, sitting on the stoop, the Preacher vivid in her mind. "Not him. It's all good riddance. Fer as he's concerned."

"I reckon. Don't have to worry by my pap. Pap ain't got much but he's got a opinion. On everthang. And he don't keer fer townfolk er lawmen neither. He'll jist run em off with his 30-30 and some twenty dollar words, even if he is shy a field hand. What the h.e.l.l. He got his pickup back by now."

"They prob'ly done fergot about us..."

"That's right."

Eventually, Birdnell gave up; he couldn't fight it any longer. He found a spade in the shed then headed for that coop down there. He would attend to those rain-sodden chickens. Since there was no percentage in watching a dirty boy dig a hole or say last rights over a chicken grave, Tizzy went back inside to rummage the drawers. She ate a stringy snapbean, and nosed through the bureau in her room. Her bureau did not disappoint. Each drawer was heavy laden; she found a lavender lace tablecloth and some jewelry boxes, some crumbling postcards from Fern Lamb to Lucan Vitus Merriweather Jr., a pocket compa.s.s, a sewing kit with several embroidery samplers tucked into it. In the bottom drawer, Tizzy uncovered a family Bibleful of pressed lilies, locks of rust-red hair, brittle as the two yellow photographs she found in the fourth chapter of Revelation. One photo was of a curlyheaded baby with the name--Lonny 6wks--inked on the back in a precise hand, the other was a holiday tintype; the same elder couple Tizzy had met before, in that parlor portrait, but the elders were surrounded now by kith and kin, several youngsters with cowlicks--rusty cowlicks, she would imagine. They all scowled at her, washed out and kind of faraway looking. Nope. Mr. Nottingham did not favor any of them.

Tizzy almost came unglued in his room. Nottingham's room was spare, with an inner door beside his bed. This second door was closed. It did not lead outside, so there was another room behind it. Nottingham's bedframe was rusting too, a nubbly olive-drab blanket smoothed and folded beneath his pillow. Only an oil lamp and soapbox table to keep company. No table doily or out-of-date bank calendar or Lazarus on the wall like her bedroom. No cedar hope chest like in hers. But then Tizzy turned, and saw the chest of drawers. She had just opened Nottingham's empty top drawer--saw nothing but a rolling tiger's eye marble--when she about croaked.

"Tiiiizzzy--!"

She jammed that drawer shut; she was out in the hall with barely a ripple. Dang him and his holler. Now the hall closet was also shut. Tizzy turned the k.n.o.b and peeked. b.u.t.ton no longer curled inside, so who knew when itty-bit finally woke up?

"Tiiizzzzy---come quick!"

She hoped Matthew Birdnell didn't expect her to come running every time he got a tick in his ear. Maybe that silly b.u.t.ton was down by the coop and he was pestering her. Tizzy would have to put a stop to anything like that. After all, they were company here, no matter what that hogboy thought.

Tizzy shuffled down to the chicken coop, too warm and faint to get in a big hurry. She didn't want him to get the idea she was at his beckon call. She found Matthew behind the coop in the hot shade, standing over a fly-buzzing, feathery lump of chickens and a moist hole.

"What took ye so long?" he demanded, festering around the edges.

"I'uz comin..." she whined.

"Take a look at this--"

"What is it?"

Suddenly, Tizzy saw how rudely shaken he was. Matthew dropped on one knee like a nervous nell, pointing hither and yon.

"Took to diggin, real soft ground, ain't even hit rock yet and I find this hyere--"

He raked back his sweaty hair then motioned at the hole. Tizzy bent forward, peering down at something bone-white, caked with earth. She looked closer. It was a hand alright.

A skeleton's hand.

"My word," she spake.

"Soon as I spotted it," Matthew explained, "I dug out around'er, best I could, they's a lotta roots down there. Anyways, they ain't no more to it. It's jist a hand."

"Ain't never seen the like..." woofed Tizzy, a tremor swept up from her bare toes; the tremor came straight up out of the mountain. Her toes stepped back from the skeleton's touch. Those bony claws seemed to bite into a deep clay gullet down there, wanting eternal shade, clawing after it.

"Looks to a-been dead a good long while."

"Uh-huh..." she allowed.

"What we gonna tell Bob?"

"Shhhh. We ain't gonna tell him nothin."

"And why the h.e.l.l not...?"

"Maybe he already knows."

Haaaaw-haw-haw-haw! Who was that laughing? They both crooked their heads, all eyes on a devilish monkey laugh. They were in for a shock. b.u.t.ton had a tongue after all. b.u.t.ton was perched on the gristmill, head back, heehawing at the heavens. She cut it short, flicked a gay little glance down toward Tizzy and Matthew kneeling stupid behind the coop; then b.u.t.ton began to cackle again. Matthew nudged Tizzy.

"She's tetched," he whispered.

Haw-ha-haw-haw, b.u.t.ton's laughter went climbing like banjo strings, giddy as she c.o.c.keyed up at the sky. And who was she to laugh, that ragam.u.f.fin tot? Did she see faces in the ether? Would she be taunting the clouds above, or merely jeering at dirtscratchers below?

S T E P 10.

Nottingham left the great spreading oak; Juda ran ahead. He'd let the dog scout as far as Pucker's k.n.o.b before he reined the booger in. Farther down the leeside of the wooded slope, the man sifted the loam, tasted it, and found it to his liking. If he seeded this earth with acorns, when the moon and the signs were ripe, then an oak--or just about anything else for that matter--would grow itself, rooted deep into the mountain. Until tree and mountain were one, alive and entwined like muscle, rock and root, almost immortal. But you had to be careful, the moon must be ripe, or the thing you grew could sour and turn on you. Some just wilted, shriveled away. Some had to be dealt with and brought low.

From beyond the green-draped chiney briers, Juda's peculiar voice echoed back to Nottingham. Even toads with stones in their heads could not foresee his advent upon the slew and the village. He might even steer clear of Johabeth's Holler this eve. Juda had never given a d.a.m.n about Johabeth, and Nottingham did not tolerate Johab at all. Nottingham did not suffer or keep those with no sense of humor.

He scooped up an angleworm, pinched it in half, then returned both ends to the soil. Now there were two. Rising, Nottingham opened his buckknife and continued down the slope. The dog mustn't get too far afield. It was harvest moon, and the soul of man kept calling.

S T E P 1 1.

True to his word, Bob returned at sundown, in time for supper. Without the gigger or wire coil, his hands were empty. He bore no willowtar either. n.o.body picked his brain on the subject, nor did Tizzy or Matthew mention their skeletal findings behind the chicken coop. Matthew almost kept the skeleton's meathook, as a keepsake; but after little persuasion from Tizzy he dumped chickens on top of those boney fingers and buried them all.

The next few days were much the same. Nottingham would slip from the house in the dark, predawn hours, and return later, usually after breakfast. He would busy himself around the place, doing repair work or sharpening tools on his grindstone wheel. Once, Tizzy joined him. Crosslegged, she watched Mr. Nottingham hone an adzehoe blade on the wheel, and they both looked up when Matthew lost his temper at the stump that tripped him. A hissyfit ensued, kicking and sniping at a wily stump, but the boy didn't interest Nottingham for long. He went back to pedaling his grindstone.

She asked if he often got riled himself and he said he did not. But Tizzy had her doubts. Surely his goblin tempers caught him short on a bad day.

"Ain't no temper left. Mebbe I burnt it all up."

She wondered, had he already forgotten the storm, the crow?

"Mr. Nottinham?"

"Yes?" he murmured, sparks shooting off his wheel.

"They ain't no road to yer door."

"Naw, they ain't. Used to be though."

"Well, whatever went with it--"

"Pa.s.sle o'roads off'n this ole hump. They's always another'n to be found."

"Down into the gaps--and the valleys?"

"You know it."

"I declare.

"Girl?"

"Yes, Mr. Nottinham?"

"Ain't no bad days to speak of."

Mostly, Tizzy left him alone. He seemed to stew better that way. Occasionally he'd settle on the front porch, brooding in the heat, his jaded fix on Tizzy and Matthew out feeding the flock or picking at each other, like snotnoses worrying a scab. He'd watch them unmoved while the Victrola's needle went round and round. Sometime in the afternoon he was bound to leave them again, always back by supper. "Look out fer that snake," he would say before departing, but Tizzy never knew what snake he meant and did not ask. More than once, while Mr. Nottingham was gone, Tizzy thought she saw phantoms, or sly country boogers who slipped around like phantoms. They would slip by the house, almost a whisper, just inside the trees, from tree to tree. She would hail them but n.o.body showed themselves.

Late, one dim afternoon, Matthew was suffering grave indignities over the sink; Tizzy pinched lice from his scalp. And a knock came, down the hall. From the front door. He and she went into the parlor, approached the door, but another knock told them the visitor was outside the porch entrance to Tizzy's bedroom. By the time they had changed kilter, opening the side bedroom door--a decrepit stranger's backside was disappearing into the forest. In a glimpse, he was hairless and wore a scavenger's coat. Matthew yodeled, then ran after the visitor. When he returned from the trees, the boy swore and swore but she was not p.r.o.ne to believe him. There wasn't a hairless tramp in sight, no one lurking. Not a whisper. She accused him of sloth, of not searching with ample vigor. As slow as the visitor had departed there was no excuse. But her words fell on deaf, lice-bitten ears. "Oh, just fergit it," Tizzy told him. That mountain goat was gone. Maybe these billies were all shy of strangers themselves, spooked by intruders on the homeplace, and would only chew their beans with Mr. Nottingham. It was none of her affair. She was a guest.

Tizzy and Matthew spent many hours in careless distraction; resting or forgetting bad jokes while they played hangman and ticky-tac-toe in the dirt. Matthew wasn't so good at hangman since he didn't really know his words or alphabet; he'd dropped out after third grade. He always wanted her to play mumble peg with his pocketknife, but Tizzy wasn't too keen on his aim or inclinations with a sharp blade. Besides, it was a boy's game and his legs could stretch farther. More often than not, Matthew would give up, get mad, and go nap on the porch swing, fanning off flies in his sleep. Up here it was unusually warm, like a false summer. With too many flies for this time of year.

Tizzy tried to nap in spurts, but the heat was too much for a decent snooze; so she'd whistle hymns and delve into her bureau drawers, fondling the tarnished jewelry and old photos, bewildered by each mystery. She hadn't returned to Mr. Nottingham's room. Not with b.u.t.ton poking her head around the odd corner, when you'd least expect it. Tizzy was afraid to be caught snooping. The tiny girl might tattle on her, though b.u.t.ton hadn't uttered a note since her laugh riot on the gristmill. That said, Tizzy still didn't confine her curiosity to the bedroom's treasure trove. The kitchen cabinets were stuffed with pickled okra and home-canned tomatoes and relish, stocks of canned goods and paraffin-sealed jars such as she'd never seen. An apothecary chest held herbal secrets in its many nooks; pennyroyal, mustard seed, bloodroot, garlic, chicory, figwort, coriander, sa.s.safras, alongside other dried bulbs and nightshades Tizzy was unacquainted with. She discovered a pair of padlocked cabinets beneath the sink, in a shadowy corner, and imagined what was kept inside.

When she grew tired of this, Tizzy would leave Matthew snoring and roam the woods near the house. She encountered no country men nor country women there, no Lychs either, though the threat always sat on her shoulder. She never ventured far, never losing sight of the yard, but she heard a creek running somewhere nearby and found it nice to lay on a rocky crag and gaze up through the branches. Squirrels and bluejays would chide overhead, raising a racket through the pines, which reminded her of the mama racc.o.o.n and her c.o.o.nlets back on the schoolyard. She wished she could have seen those c.o.o.nlets, just once. She prayed they were growing fat and safe. And regularly, Tizzy's c.o.o.nprayers were broken by a steady echo, a ricochet sound, like someone chopping wood somewhere far off, each chop carried on the breeze. Once, while Tizzy listened, a brown cow ambled through.

On another uncloudy afternoon, Tizzy actually dozed on the rock, opening her eyes to discover that nightfall was near. She spooked as she brushed ants off her face, her chinaman eyes weren't happy with the dearth of sunrays piercing the trees. It was cool with dusk seeping in when she returned to the house. She saw Matthew fast asleep on the porch, his shoes off, his dirty white toes tangled in the swing's chain. Walking around back, Tizzy climbed the step and startled Mr. Nottingham.

His eyes shot sidelong at the sound of her. He stood tall in the kitchen, drinking, draining the last from a fruit jar. The kitchen was in gloom and awfully still, the way rooms can be when night is abrew. His house was utterly unlit. But in she went. And Nottingham got disturbed at Tizzy's sudden appearance. Not shocked, exactly, just corrupted in a manner she'd never seen on his jagged face.

"Oh--hidy," she said.

He wiped his pinkish lips, smearing them clean with the back of his hand.

"There you be. Wondered where you was off to," he mumbled, laying the fruit jar in the sink. "Didn't see you round the place."

"I'uz just out walkin."

"Little late fer that. They's wolves in these parts."

"I didn't go fer."

"Hongry timber wolf'll stalk right up to yer winder, and you'll count it fer enough."