If you copy this story, please include this notice and this introductory material.
Dogland is a novel published by Tor Books. The following text is not the copyedited version (I don’t have a file of that), so don’t blame Tor for minor mistakes.
This is available under a Creative Commons “Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported” license. For more information, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ .
You can learn much too much about me, and also my wife, Emma Bull, at www.qwertyranch.com .
—Will Shetterly
* * *
This novel is dedicated with love to Mom, Dad, Mike, and Liz.
Table of Contents
Chapter One: The Way to the Feast of Flowers
Chapter Two: In the Foundations of Dream
Chapter Three: Things Seen in Black and White
Chapter Four: Building in Blood
Chapter Five: Things Seen in Color, Part One
Chapter Six: Things Seen in Color, Part Two
Chapter Seven: Learning to Swim
Chapter Eight: Seeking Plunder
Chapter Nine: One Hundred Breeds
Chapter Ten: Wrestling With Angels
Chapter Eleven: Not Long Before the End
Chapter Twelve: Peace on Earth
It was a dream, then a place, then a memory. My father built it near the Suwannee River. I like to think it was in the heart of Florida, because it was, and is, in my heart. Its name was Dogland.
Some people say you can know others if you know the central incidents that shaped their lives. But an incident is an island in time, and to know the effect of the island on those who land there, you must know something about the river they have traveled.
And I must warn you before we begin, I don’t know that river well. I visit that time and place like a ghost with poor vision and little memory. I look up the river and see fog rolling in. I look down the river, and the brightness of the approaching day blinds me. I see shapes moving behind me and beyond me, but who they are and what they do, I cannot say. I will tell what I know is true, and I will invent what I believe is true, and that, I think, is all you can ask any storyteller to do.
I learned the Nix family history from the stories Pa told. Even at the age of four, I suspected that Pa’s stories might not be perfectly true. When Pa said we Nixes came to North America as indentured servants working our way out of debtor’s prison, Grandma Bette would make a face and say he couldn’t know that. When he said we Nixes had Lakota and Ojibwe blood in our veins, Grandma Bette would say she wasn’t prejudiced, but it simply wasn’t so: she and Pa and his brothers and sisters were dark because her people were Black Dutch, from a part of Holland where everyone had black hair and black eyes. And then Grandma Bette wouldn’t say a word for half an hour or more, a very long time for Grandma Bette to be quiet.
Pa usually told the family stories when driving to the store with Little Bit and me, while Ma stayed home with Digger. Little Bit would sit on the front seat of the station wagon with Pa, and I would stand in back, straddling the transmission hump with my arms wrapped over the front seat. After awhile, Little Bit or I would ask for the Little Big Horn story, or the Light-horse Harry Lee story, or another of the Nix family histories, like:
“Tell us ‘bout that bad man.”
“What bad man is that?”
“Our great-great-great-great-great-great grampa!”
“That’s a lot of greats.”
“‘Bout the bad man!”
“You mean the horse thief?”
“No.” The horse thief story was hardly a story at all. A Nix was caught for stealing horses and hung, that was all. Pa only told that story when Grandma Bette was visiting.
“‘Bout the bad man.”
“In jail.”
“An’ the train.”
“An’ the man ran off with his wife.”
“That story! Tell us that story.”
“Tell us that story. Please?”
“Pretty please. Pretty please tell us that story.”
“Well, there’s not much to tell.”
“Please, Pa! Please, please, please!”
“Well, okay. There was this man—”
“A Nix.”
“—a Nix.” Probably a farmer. Most forgotten Nixes were probably farmers. “And some fellow ran away with his wife.” The farmer was old, forty-five or fifty, with stubbly, hollowed cheeks and staring eyes. He wore overalls. His wife was young, barely twenty, pretty and plump and blond. The other man, a lanky salesman with clean-scrubbed skin, was from the city. He wore a nice suit and had a shy smile, and he parted his hair in the middle. “They were on a train. They thought they’d gotten away.”
“But they hadn’t, had they, Pa!”
“No, they hadn’t.” The couple sat side by side in the train. The wife-stealer sat by the aisle with his hat in his lap. He wore a green plaid suit, and he kept twisting the hat, a derby, with his smooth, clean fingers. He grinned his shy smile while staring happily into the eyes of the woman. She’d glance at him, glance away, then glance back, then glance away again. She was nervous, not afraid that her husband would find her but merely embarrassed to be so obviously the object of the young man’s love. She feared he expected too much of her and would be disappointed once they’d lived together. She loved him as much as he loved her, and she could not believe two people could be so perfectly created for each other.
“He caught up with them, didn’t he, Pa?”
“Right in the train, right?”
“That’s right.” The passenger car’s interior was like the train in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, only in color: seats of plush green velvet, heavy drapes by the windows, walls paneled in red oak. Happy people in Sunday clothes waited to depart. Men had moustaches that waggled in easy grins above their cigars. Women carried parasols and wore long dresses. The conductor looked like Captain Kangaroo with his plump belly and his white walrus moustache. He talked to a tiny old woman with sugar-white hair coiled on her head who wore square wire-rimmed glasses with lenses no bigger than cough drops, and no less thick.
“He managed to follow them. Left his farm as if he didn’t plan to come back. Came after them with a Bible and a shotgun.”
“Oooh.”
“He caught up with them on the train.” The conductor felt someone brush by him, saw someone dressed wrong for traveling by train. He turned away from the old woman, called, Hey, you! The man, the Nix, my ancestor, stopped to look back. The conductor stared at him. The old Nix wore a stiff black jacket over faded overalls. He carried a shotgun at his side. The conductor said, You can’t bring that gun in here. The old man looked at the conductor, looked at the shotgun, looked back at the conductor, said, It’s for hunting. He walked on.
The young couple did not see or hear the old Nix. The other people in the car did not notice the old Nix. He was an eccentric farmer, nothing more. The old man walked up behind the couple and called the young man’s name.
The young man in the plaid suit turned; he had never seen his beloved’s husband. He said, Yes? Beside him, the young woman turned, too. She raised her hand to her mouth, but in that moment, no words could come from her lips. The old man never looked at her.
“He said, ‘You sure you’re so-and-so?’ asking the fellow’s name again to be safe.”
The young man smiled as he nodded. The young woman spoke a word then, perhaps the young man’s name, perhaps my ancestor’s. As the young man looked toward her, the old man raised the gun-—
“—blew the man’s brains out, right there in the train.”
The shotgun’s explosion was loud, but the young woman’s scream may have been louder. The old woman covered her wrinkled mouth with a white lace glove. The conductor’s eyelids opened wide as if he could not get enough light to his pupils to see what had really happened.
“Then what? Huh, Pa? Then what?”
“Nothing, really. They locked him up. He didn’t try to get away or anything. He’d done what he had to do.”
“An’ then?”
“He hung himself in the jail cell.” The old man dangled from his belt (I never wondered why my ancestor wore both overalls and a belt) which had become long enough to tie to a convenient wooden beam. The walls of the cell had been built with blocks of gray stone. The old man spun slowly. His boots had holes in them. Sunlight shone obliquely between the bars of the single window. The shadows stretched across the floor, across the old man’s faded, battered boots.
“Oooooh.”
I learned my personal history from Ma. She told me about my birth in 1955 on an army base in South Carolina, and about the Mexico trip when everyone smiled at the happy gringo baby with curly red hair, and how proud Pa was. She told me that after they brought Little Bit home to the farm in Minnesota, they’d hear her cry and rush into the room to find me already there, patting her head and saying, “Don’t cry, baby, don’t cry.” It took them several weeks to realize that I would pinch her when we were alone, then comfort her as the adults arrived. That story always made me laugh.
I liked the old stories because they changed a little with each telling. Sometimes an old story inspired a new one that I had never heard, a story that told me about something I hadn’t suspected I hadn’t known. That was how I learned about the drunken man at the hospital when I was born.
Ma told me that story one night when I was four or five, soon after we moved to Florida. I asked, “Ma? D’you ‘member the hairy man an’ the tree lady at Mardi Gras?”
She shook her head and set aside the copy of Reader’s Digest that she’d been looking through. “There were an awful lot of people dressed up that day, and I wasn’t really paying much attention to any of them.” She smiled.
“The tree lady that helped you.”
“The nice Negro woman?” Ma smiled and glanced toward our TV set. We always had second-hand televisions that never delivered clear pictures or sound; one was usually playing in the background of any family conversation. “Oh, yes. But I don’t remember anything about her and a tree.” I thought Ma wouldn’t continue, but then she said, “It’s funny how you were all born under such odd circumstances.”
“We were?” No one else was in the living room. Digger and Little Bit had to go to bed half an hour before I did, and Pa was out in the yard working on the station wagon again.
“Well, not very funny,” Ma said. “But having Digger in the middle of the Mardi Gras parade is pretty funny.” She smiled and blushed at the same time, and so did I.
“Yeah.” I laughed. “Pretty funny.”
“And on the day Little Bit was born, an entire flock of quail landed outside my room. You hardly ever see quail in northern Minnesota. Several of them settled on my window sill and started whistling away. Doctor Jim said you could’ve hunted your dinner with a shopping bag. One of the nurses went to shoo them away, and they just flew around her, a-singing and a-singing. But as soon as Doctor Jim walked toward them, they flew off.”
I knew the punch line to that one: “Figure he forgot his shopping bag?”
Ma set her hand on my head and ran her fingers over the bristles of my crewcut. “I suppose so.”
“And what about me, Ma?”
“What about you?” Ma winced the tiniest bit, then smiled. “Oh, that. It’s nothing, really.”
“It’s funny?”
“Well, there was a drunk man in the waiting room, saying you were his boy. I was afraid Luke would hit him, but the orderlies took the man outside.”
I could see a drunken cowboy staggering into a hospital room wearing chaps and six-guns. “What kind of man?”
“Just some man. There are some very strange people in this world, Chris. You have to be careful.”
“Yes’m.”
I couldn’t remember the farm in Minnesota or the trip down to New Orleans, but Digger’s birth was one of my earliest memories and one of the first stories that I could tell, though it didn’t seem like a real story to anyone except me. It wasn’t like the things that no one else remembered because they probably weren’t important to them, like my earliest memory, of a day in the living room in Louisiana when the TV screen suddenly went dark in the middle of a show. A white dot lingered at its center as if the whole picture had fallen in on itself, and then the dot faded to black. Pa walked across the living room and did something to the back of the set, but that’s where that memory ends.
Everyone in the family remembered the day of Digger’s birth, even Little Bit and maybe even Digger himself, but everyone remembered it a little differently. He was born in 1958, soon after my family came to New Orleans. Pa had been away selling encyclopedias, and Grandma Letitia hadn’t come down to be with Ma yet because the baby wasn’t due for three more weeks. Ma had called us in from the yard and said that Little Bit and I would have to come with her in a taxi, and we’d have to be very good and take care of her like she usually took care of us.
I fetched the pink suitcase that Ma had packed a month before, and Little Bit carried Ma’s purse. No one said much. A neighbor came out and offered to drive Ma, but just then the taxi arrived. The driver, a red-nosed man who looked like Santa Claus with a flat-top, kept saying, “Don’t you worry none; we’ll get you to the hospital fine. Wish it weren’t Mardi Gras. Traffic’s gonna be hellacious. But don’t you fret now, ma’m. We’ll get you there jus’ fine, you’ll see.”
The taxi could not reach its destination, but a parade of costumed drunks were not enough to stop my brother from reaching his. Ma said, “The baby’s coming,” and the driver yelled into the crowded street, “He’p me! He’p me! A woman’s havin’ a child! Somebody he’p me!” Little Bit and I sat very quietly beside Ma, watching her breathe, watching the costumed crowd, watching for a white-haired doctor in a long white coat with a gleaming stethoscope around his neck and a black leather bag at his side.
“I know ‘bout birthin’ babies,” said a fat black woman with oak leaves sticking to her hair and her long green dress.
“Oh, thank Jesus,” said the taxi driver.
“I do, too,” said a scrawny, bare-chested white man with goat horns at his temples and shaggy trousers covering his legs. “I know to get everyone out of the way.”
“Yes, sir. That’s right. That’s a fine idea.” The driver and the goat man began hustling people away from the cab. I listened to Ma’s breathing, and I felt myself getting more and more scared. Ma smiled and kept saying it was okay, but she was sweating and red and gasping.
“You chil’en wait outside the cab,” said the woman with oak leaves. “Your mama won’t have no trouble at all, now.”
“Ma?” said Little Bit.
Ma smiled more easily, and her breathing grew deeper, slower, and more even. “Go on, you two. I did all right with you, didn’t I? Stay—” She gasped, then smiled again. “—by the car, okay?”
The tree woman glared at the people clustered around us. “Y’all turn your backs and give this poor woman some privacy, hear!”
The watchers, white and black, young and old, rich and poor, all nodded and obeyed. In the middle of a street packed tight with bodies, under a bright midday sun, Ma had more privacy than she would in any delivery room.
The taxi driver lifted Little Bit onto the hood of the car. They played pattycake while the Mardi Gras crowds surged around Ma’s shielding ring of people. Everyone ignored me, which comforted me; it meant there was nothing I was supposed to worry about. I couldn’t see Ma, and I could only see the back of the tree woman, which wasn’t that interesting, so I studied the hairy man.
Every kid knows about Halloween suits made of crinkly cloth in colors unknown to nature. The hair on the man’s legs was dark brown and matted with beer or sweat. His hooves were muddy, and one was chipped. His horns stuck out from the curly hair on his head, which was the color of the hair covering his legs. The horns were small and dull black and didn’t quite match. He smelled like a dog that’d been in the rain.
The hairy man put his fists on his flanks and said, “What you lookin’ at, son?”
“You,” I said, because Pa had taught me to answer adults, and then, “Sir,” because Pa had taught me to be polite.
The hairy man nodded, then belched. I smelled something like Grandma Bette’s breath after she drank port — soda pop for grown-ups, only stronger. Then the man laughed. “Think you see good, son?”
I had never thought about how well I saw. Ma and Pa both wore glasses, and Little Bit and I didn’t, so I nodded.
The hairy man laughed again. “You ain’t seen a thing till you’ve seen it straight on an’ out the corner of your eye, both. Near any fool can do one or the other.”
As an approaching band broke into “When the Saints Go Marching In,” the tree woman said, loud enough that I could hear over the noise of the parade and the crowd, “You got a son, ma’m. A beautiful son, and he’s doing just fine. You rest easy now, hear?”
A white policeman — a real policeman with a real pistol on his hip, not someone in a costume — had joined the ring of people standing around the cab. Someone began to cheer, and others joined in, even people far away in the parade who couldn’t have known what was going on. The cries — “She had a son!” and “A boy’s been born!” and “Hallelujah!” — rippled up and down Bourbon Street.
“She wants her chil’en,” the tree woman said. A few leaves fell from her hair as she brushed against the roof of the cab. One dropped into my hand. It seemed fresh and green, as if the woman had plucked the finishing touches for her costume only minutes before.
“Where’s her children?” the policeman asked.
“Ma!” I yelled, suddenly frightened. “Ma, I’m here!” I lunged between the adults’ legs, between hairy legs in Bermuda shorts, smooth legs in dresses, blue trousers that belonged to the policeman, blue jeans that belonged to farmers, black cotton trousers that belonged to jazz musicians, baggy red-and-white striped breeches belonging to pirates, rough leather chaps belonging to cowboys, fringed brown trousers belonging to Indians, tight white pedal-pushers belonging to motion picture starlets. “I’m here, Ma! I’m here!”
The tree woman grinned at me as she stepped away from the open taxi door. Her gold tooth reflected sunlight, and I was blinded by the sight of her and my mother and the baby. When my sight returned, I saw Ma lying in the back of the taxi. Her blue print dress was all rumpled and stained, and the taxi seat was, too, but that was okay. Ma was smiling. In her arms, she held a wet little red thing that looked like an ugly puppet or a shaved monkey. “Chris,” Ma said. “Say hello to your little brother.”
“Ma?” I whispered. “You okay, Ma?”
“I’m fine, Chris. Let Little Bit see, too.”
“Yes, Ma.” As my sister squeezed past me, I backed away, back through the sea of legs, and started to turn to run as fast and as far as I could. A hand gripped my shoulder, and I looked up into the hairy man’s face.
“Ugly li’l bastard, ain’t he?”
I nodded hesitantly, not sure whether I should let anyone talk that way about my new brother.
“But he’s beautiful, too. It’s tough to understand, but there it is. Chew on it awhile, son.”
“Yes, sir.”
The policeman, by the cab door, grinned like the drunkest of the festivalers. “Sure is a handsome li’l fellow. Got a name for ‘im, ma’m?”
“We’re not sure,” Ma said gently, which meant that Pa hadn’t said if there was a name he wanted Digger to have.
“George’d be good,” said the hairy man. “Means he works with the earth.”
“George?” Ma spoke as if she were tasting the name on her tongue.
“George is right nice,” said the fat woman with oak leaves, and she smiled at the hairy man. A breeze touched the taxi and the crowd, erasing the damp Louisiana heat for a moment.
Ma smiled. “George.” She stated it in the quiet voice that she almost never used, the voice that meant she had decided something and nothing anyone, even Pa, could do or say would ever change her mind.
“George!” someone in the crowd shouted. People called, “Good name, ma’m!” and “Let’s hear it for George!” and “Who the hell’s George?” I couldn’t make out much else in the joyous babble. Someone put a dark bottle in my hands and I drank deeply, thinking this was soda pop. When I began to cough, someone grabbed my shoulder. I thought I was about to be spanked for drinking wine, but the hand belonged to the policeman, who pushed me toward the taxi. “Get on in, boy, your mama still ought to get to the hospital.”
I looked around. The hairy man and the woman in oak leaves had gone. I nodded, mumbled, “Yessir,” and got in next to Little Bit.
The police car ran its siren all the way to the hospital. Little Bit sat next to me in the taxi and kept sliding onto my side of the seat to look out the window, but I didn’t mind. Ma sat with the baby and smiled and whispered to him, and the taxi flew so fast that the wind whipped through the window, so fast that the Louisiana heat couldn’t catch us, and Little Bit laughed, and everything was as wonderful as it could be, even if I did have a shaved monkey doll for a brother.
Pa came home five days later. Grandma Letitia, who’d arrived the night of Digger’s birth to take care of Ma and us kids, went right back to Minnesota. I tried to tell Pa about the tree woman and the hairy man, but Pa said that’s Mardi Gras for you, people’ll do any damn thing for fun, and why’d the hospital expect us to pay the full bill when Ma never even got a peek inside the delivery room?
I was sorry that Ma didn’t remember the hairy man. I’d wanted to ask if he had looked like the drunken man at the hospital in South Carolina when I was born.
I have few memories about the pink house in New Orleans that Ma loved, and the few that I have are suspicious, as if they come from things I was told rather than things I lived. I believe I remember running around in a small yard of lush green grass with a coke bottle in my hand, but that may come from Ma telling me how all the neighbor kids drank soda pop, and we Nixes would want some, so she would give us orange juice in a Coca-Cola bottle, and for awhile, that satisfied us.
I think the end of our street curved, rather than came to an intersection. I remember running with other kids around a winding sidewalk. Where it took us, I have no idea.
I do remember moving from the pink house. Some people took away our swing set—in the back of a pick-up truck, I think. Little Bit and I, and maybe Digger, too, ran behind it, watching it go away. I think we cried. (Ma said once that I watched our possessions being sold, and she explained that we would be getting a new house, new furniture, new friends, and new swings. I considered this for hours, then asked “Mommy, will we be getting a new Daddy, too?”)
Ma must have cried too as she said goodbye to her neighbors, her pink house with its pink General Electric appliances, and a life of some security, no matter how small. In South Carolina, Pa had brought home a check from the Army, and at the farm in Minnesota, he had worked part-time as a butcher, and in New Orleans, he had been paid by the owners of the horses he had trained, and later by the bank for which he had sold insurance. But now he was going to work for his dream, and dreams can’t be counted on when it’s time to pay your bills.
Pa sold everything that would not fit into or on top of our station wagon. When the pink house was bare, we drove away. Remembering later trips, I can guess some of the details of that one: Pa sang “Little Joe the Wrangler” and “The Streets of Laredo,” and Ma sang “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” and “Roll Over, Roll Over.” I sang the Daniel Boone theme song, and Little Bit sang any words that passed through her mind. We ate at hamburger stands and truck stops and Mom and Pop roadside restaurants where Pop tended the grill and Mom made a special of the day in the back kitchen. We stayed in little motels run by elderly couples in partial retirement. We drove all day, departing in darkness and arriving in darkness. If we drove past something that interested any of us, we did not turn back. If we missed a road we had intended to take, Pa told Ma to find the next one that would intersect the one we wanted. In the afternoon we stopped by city parks or country streams, and Pa napped while we kids ran around, chasing each other and yelling and doing our best to get a full day’s playing into half an hour. Ma sat in the shade with a magazine, sometimes reading, sometimes fanning herself, always glancing at us through large sunglasses to be sure no one was eating dirt or chasing large dogs.
That must have been the trip when Digger got his name. George Abner Nix had a metal construction crane with black rubber wheels and a movable front scoop. He played with it constantly. He rarely talked, but one of the words he knew and used was “digger,” the name of his toy. Pa started calling him that, and everyone, including Digger, thought it was funny.
Little Bit got her name because she had trouble pronouncing Letitia Bette Nix. She was a tiny girl with short brown hair and big brown eyes; “Little Bit” seemed appropriate to Pa and to everyone.
I never had a nickname other than Chris. I knew I had been named for Mark Christopher Nix, my father’s brother, the brother who’d taken care of him when he was little, then gone off to the Second World War, that great war that followed the Great War to End All Wars, and died a hero. I didn’t know then that he’d been shot down over Italy by American forces after returning from a successful mission; I didn’t know then that the good guys kill the wrong people, too. I had seen a picture of Uncle Mark looking like John Wayne in his pilot’s uniform. Ma was keeping his little pin-on silver wings for me until I was old enough to take care of them. Being named for him was better than any nickname could be.
As we drove toward Florida, land of flowers, where Spanish moss and oranges grew on every tree, Pa told me Grandpa Wade and Uncle Mark stories late at night, when I had the navigator’s job of keeping the driver awake while watching for the next road that we wanted, and Mom and Digger and Little Bit slept in the backseat.
Wade Nix, so far as I knew, sprang like Adam from the American Midwest at the beginning of the twentieth century. He married Bette Kalff, a girl much younger than him, and they settled on a farm in northern Minnesota among the descendants of Norwegian and Swedish pioneers. In photos, they are a small, dark, handsome couple, but they may only seem small and dark next to their tall, fair-skinned neighbors. A picture exists in which a lean, weathered farmer smiles with a laughing baby on his knee; Wade Nix died soon after meeting me, before I had a chance to remember meeting him.
The Grandpa Wade story I heard most often was from late in his life. He and Bette had taken a trailer house down to Florida for the winter. Every morning, he would go out and look at the sky, then shake his head. After several weeks of this, he said, “Another goddamn beautiful day,” hitched up the trailer, and started back to Minnesota. Pa always laughed when he told that one.
Wade and Bette Nix had six children: a daughter, a son, a daughter, then three sons. From the names Bette Nix gave them, you would think she was a devout Christian. The boys were Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; the girls were Hope and Faith. Whether Charity died young, in the womb, or was never conceived, I do not know. What a fifth son might have been named, I cannot guess. I know that Grandma Bette believed in the Lutheran church for human company, but she found her spiritual comfort among the beans and tomatoes of her gardens, and the tribulations of the shadowy actors on her afternoon soap operas.
What the young Bette Nix might have believed or sought, I cannot say. Pa would say Grandma Bette believed in having her children do her work and sought to keep them working. The only story he told about Bette was about how he would run down to the creek beside their farm whenever she chased him to beat him. If he made it to the creek, he was safe. She was too fat to scramble down the steep bank after him.
The only story Grandma Bette told that I remember was about crossing a river in a covered wagon when she was a girl. The water came up through the floor boards, but they crossed safely.
When her second son was born, Bette said his name would be Mark. My Grandpa Wade, who Pa said never spoke unless he had something to say, looked at her and at the red-faced baby and said, “Mark Christopher.” Bette stared at him, but he offered no explanation and left their bedroom.
The first names of her children seemed to satisfy Bette’s wish to shape a pattern for her neighbors to admire. The children’s middle names were those of dead relatives and presidents. Pa’s middle name was Homer, but he always signed himself “Luke H. Nix.” When he was in the Merchant Marine, he had his middle name legally changed to “H.” so he could continue to say, as he always had, that the “H.” stood for nothing.
After Uncle Mark was born, several years passed before the birth of my father, and then the birth of his younger brother. The Nix girls had school and chores around the farm house to keep them busy, and the oldest boy, Matt, had school and field work with Grandpa Wade, so Uncle Mark served as Pa’s babysitter at least as often as either of his sisters.
Soon after Pa entered school, Matt Nix left it. Uncle Mark became the oldest male Nix at a tiny public school filled with Hansons, Olsens, Petersons, and Lundgrens. When the Nixes got into fights with blond town boys, Uncle Mark was the family champion. Pa began to start fights with older boys, knowing that Uncle Mark would come to his aid, until the day Uncle Mark saw what was happening and let Pa get beat thoroughly. Pa had a bloody nose and a broken tooth from that one. He laughed whenever he told about it, and so did I.
The Nix boys had a reputation for an easy way with girls, according to Pa. When Uncle Mark was a teenager, he had the easiest way of all. He was tall and good-looking, he played the guitar, he drove a shiny Studebaker convertible, and he was the captain of the football team. It’s true that almost every boy in that community was tall, and Mark only knew a few songs and probably didn’t play them well, and the Studebaker was second-hand, and there were so few high school boys in that small town school that anyone who wanted to could be on the football team. But it’s also true that boys and girls both liked Uncle Mark’s smile, and not everyone was brave enough or driven enough to sing in front of others, and the Studebaker’s paint gleamed and its engine hummed, and even if anyone could be on the team, only one could be captain, and that one was Uncle Mark.
And it’s also true that my Pa got in a lot of fights when he was young, and the person who’d sit him down and hear his story and tell him he’d fought well whether he’d won or lost was Uncle Mark.
The story about Uncle Mark and Grandpa Wade goes like this:
“Mark and your Grandpa Wade and I went into town one Saturday morning for supplies, and this fellow I didn’t know came out of the store and stopped in front of us. We didn’t think anything of it; we just began to move around him, when he says, ‘Mark. You, Mark Nix. You afraid to face me?’
“Now, this fellow was big, a Swede farmer with shoulders that you get from working fourteen hours a day when work needs to be done. Being afraid of him seemed like a perfectly natural thing to me, and probably to your Grandpa Wade, too. I don’t know if Mark was afraid, or if he just felt funny having this happen in front of his pa and his little brother. There wasn’t much Mark could do but shake his head and say, ‘No, Carl, I’m not afraid of you.’
“The Swede grins and says, ‘All right, then. You and me, right here, right now.’ And he begins to roll up his sleeves.
“Mark says, ‘She said she wasn’t your girl anymore.’
“The Swede kind of loses his grin and looks real mean. He says, ‘You chickening out, Nix?’
“Mark looks at Pa and looks at me and says to the Swede, ‘If you want, I’ll meet you tonight at the Nitehawk.’
“The Swede says, ‘Why should I wait up all night when you’re right here?’
“Now, by this time, there’s a few people inside the store listening, and there’s a couple more on the sidewalk, and we’re blocking the doorway, even though everyone around is more interested in whether there’ll be a fight than in getting past us. Mark’s kind of blushing, ‘cause he knows everyone’s going to be talking about this, no matter what he does.
“‘Hell,’ the Swede says, real disgusted. ‘You’re yellow, Nix. Little yellow prettyboy. Come on, I’ll give you the first blow. Hit me, if you’re man enough.” He sticks out his chin. “I dare you. Hit me.”
“Mark looks at your grandpa, and your grandpa just says, ‘Well, son, hit the man.’”
Pa would laugh and repeat that: “‘Well, son, hit the man.’” And then the story would end the way it had to: “So Mark cold-cocks him, right there. One punch to the chin and the Swede’s on the ground, wondering what train went over him. One punch. Your grandpa says, ‘Come on, son,’ and we went about our business. They were helping that poor Swede out of the store as we left.” Pa would shake his head and grin then. “One punch.”
Uncle Mark joined the Army Air Corps when the U.S. went to war. Pa, too young to join the Army, became a radio operator in the Merchant Marine. One day at sea, he learned that Uncle Mark had been shot down over Italy. A week later, he overheard a radio report that a ship carrying thousands of American bodies back from Europe had been sunk. The news never reached the public.
The U.S. government buried a coffin and set up a tombstone with my name on it at the military graveyard on the outskirts of Minneapolis. None of the Nix family traveled to the funeral. A few weeks after the funeral, Bette and Wade Nix received an American flag in exchange for their son.
If Pa was bitter about the end of Uncle Mark’s story, I never heard that. I heard pride when he said that Uncle Mark and his copilot stayed in the plane until everyone else had parachuted safely, and then it was too late for them to bail out, too. What followed after that was just the way the story ended, no different than Custer at the Little Big Horn or the charge of the Light Brigade.
Ma told stories of our past, too, when she drove and Pa rested. Hers tended to be quiet, afternoon tales. Mystery and violence were usually replaced with humor, but sometimes the grim things lurked in the corners of Ma’s stories, outside the telling and making themselves known by their shadows, where none of us saw them unless we looked.
What should have been the best story of all was, in Ma’s telling, a simple statement of fact: We were related to General George Armstrong Custer through Grandma Letitia, who had been born a Kuster with a K, a cousin or a second-cousin of his, or perhaps they’d come from the same German village centuries before. The details didn’t matter. One of America’s most famous heroes was one of ours, even if Ma had nothing to say about his life or death. Pa did his part to enrich this simple detail for Digger, Little Bit, and me by pointing out that our Indian blood meant we had ancestors on both sides of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, among its losers and its winners.
I don’t remember any of Ma’s stories about Grandpa Abner. Ma loved him, and so did we, because he was a happy man who was always finding ways to make us laugh. Maybe because of that, we didn’t need any stories about him. He was the druggist in Rosecroix, Minnesota, a small town about a hundred miles from the farm where Pa grew up.
Ma’s favorite story about Grandma Letitia was of a Sunday afternoon when they had gone driving. Grandma Letitia had seen a sign advertising a new soft drink, 7-Up, and she had said, “What’s Zup?” Grandpa Abner had smiled and said, “I don’t know, dear. What’s up?” “No,” said Grandma Letitia, pointing adamantly at the billboard. “What’s Zup? What’s Zup?”
Ma was an only child, so she had no stories to tell about brave or foolish siblings. She had been a happy and an obedient child, and as the daughter of one of the three richest families in town (the druggist comes after the two other wealthy Ds of every small town, the doctor and the dentist), Ma had been protected.
But Ma knew one story whose mystery I had never appreciated. Grandma Letitia was one of four Kuster girls. The oldest, Rose, had been a journalist for a good newspaper. Rose Kuster was a tall, independent woman, the quintessence of the 1920s free women. She wore short, fringed dresses; she bobbed her hair; she smoked cigarettes and raced roadsters; she kept her father’s Colt .45 in her luggage. She never married. Grandma Letitia thought her oldest sister was a scandal and a delight.
Sometime between the two world wars, Rose Kuster took an ocean liner to Europe and never arrived. No one knew what happened to her, whether she fell overboard, was thrown, or threw herself. Her trunk came back to the U.S. without any hint of the fate of its owner.
Maybe I never appreciated the story because Ma would suggest that Rose had lost her memory and married a count, or had run away with a man who had not won Rose’s father’s approval. Those conclusions could not compare with struggling to land a shot-up B-12 in the dark hills of Italy. Only when I was older did I think of a moonless night on the ocean, and a ship cruising away while a dance band played a fox trot, and a woman in an evening gown swimming gamely after it, knowing her cries and the waving of her hand would never be noticed.
Only one set of family stories remains to be told before my story begins. These are the stories I learned as a child about Susan Genevieve Uvdal and Luke H. Nix.
When Ma graduated from high school, she went hundreds of miles away to the city, to Minneapolis. At the University, she danced late into the night at fraternity parties and hotel ballrooms, and eventually, homesick, she returned to her parents’ house. She became a Wave during the second World War. In photos of her in uniform, she looks like Judy Garland, another Minnesotan. After the war, with three others whom she called girls but who must have been young women, she spent a summer driving through Mexico. Handsome men were always available to help them whenever they had trouble with their car. When Ma returned to Minnesota, she was engaged several times, but she always found the men too stolid to marry.
Pa stayed in the Merchant Marine for some time after the war. In Germany, he was jumped by two men, perhaps for his money. Pa knocked one down, straddled his chest, and tightened his fingers around the man’s throat. The second man kicked Pa in the chin, so Pa banged the first man’s head against the cobblestones. They repeated this like figures in a cuckoo clock striking an hour that would not end. At last, the first German quit kicking Pa and carried away his friend, or maybe the Military Police arrived. That night left Pa with a patch of mottled skin on his jaw where his beard would never grow.
When he left the Merchant Marine, he came back to northern Minnesota, but not to the family farm. He rented a cabin on Lake of the Woods, and he bought a used red MG convertible, the only sports car in several counties. One summer, he and his brothers and sisters put on the first water-skiing show on Lake of the Woods. His cabin became the county’s weekend party house. He lived the life Uncle Mark might have led.
Pa was tending bar at the Nitehawk on the evening he met Ma. She came in with another man, and when Pa asked her what she’d like, she said, “In Minneapolis, they knew how to make highballs, but no one knows how to make them up here.”
Pa said, “Sister, if you can drink ‘em, I can build ‘em.”
That was probably the true moment of my conception.
At the Florida welcome station, three pretty women with their hair piled high on their heads gave us smiles and small paper cups of orange juice. When I held out mine for more, Ma said, “Chris! What do you say?”
I said, “Please,” and the pretty woman refilled my cup. I kept saying please until I could drink no more.
Ma gathered brochures of tourist attractions and showed us pictures of pirates in Tampa, mermaids in Silver Springs, and cowboys in Ocala. Pa said soon there’d be a brochure for Dogland here. He asked one of the pretty women with high hair if they had any literature about Latchahee County. The pretty woman frowned, said “Excuse me,” and went to speak with a prettier woman with higher hair.
Little Bit whispered, “‘Piders.”
I said, “What?”
Little Bit said, “In her hair. ‘Pider nest.”
I shivered and stared.
The youngest of the three spider women returned. “I’m sorry. We’re all out of brochures on Latchahee County. There isn’t much there—”
“Now,” Pa said.
“Beg pardon?”
Pa smiled. He always smiled at pretty women, and they always smiled at him. “Isn’t much there now. But there will be.”
“Oh, yes, sir,” the woman said. “Florida’s the fastest growing state in the nation. And as you visit here—”
“Settle here,” Pa said. “Doing our bit to keep you growing so fast.”
“Well!” said the woman. “Welcome to Florida! You, too, ma’m.”
Ma said, “Thank you. We’re looking forward to living here.”
The woman looked at us. “And you, li’l chil’en? Are you looking forward to living here, too?”
I looked at my cowboy boots and nodded. Little Bit hid behind me. Digger just stared at the woman.
Ma said, “They’re tired. It’s been a long trip.”
“Yes,” said the young woman, smiling even more. “I’m sure it’s been.” At the end of the counter, the other two women watched us. Laughing, they waggled their fingers toward us like spiders walking.
Ma said, “Say goodbye, Chris, Letitia Bette.”
I whispered, “G’bye.”
The spider women laughed and called, “Be seeing you.”
#
In Florida, nature has not been taught its place. Plants and animals do not know the forms they’re permitted up north, so you find thick gray swatches of Spanish moss in the trees, and snapping turtles with heads shaped like those of eagles, and deep carpets of sawgrass growing along the bottoms of the rivers, and walls of green palmetto spears making dens in the countryside for rattlesnakes and wild pigs.
As we drove to Latchahee County, Ma said, “See, Letitia Bette? The moss is waving hello.”
Little Bit smiled and waved. “H’lo, moss.” Digger giggled. I thought of Halloween witches with thick gray hair.
I pointed with an empty cowboy cap pistol. “Turtle.”
Ma said, “Seven animals for Chris. One to catch up to Digger, six to catch up to Letitia Bette.”
I always hated car games.
Pa said, “They call that a gopher down here. Turtles live in the water, gophers live on the ground. Their heads look different. Down here, they don’t have hairy gophers like up north. Down here, lots of things are different.”
Little Bit pointed. “Fire.”
In the light of the sunset, a cross burned before an old wooden house. Several people stood around it wearing sheets.
I said, “Is it Hall’ween?”
Pa laughed, loud enough to surprise me. “No, son. You’ve got a couple of months to go.”
Digger, pressing his hands and nose against the window of the station wagon, stared at the distant flame. Ma patted the back of his head.
Little Bit said, “Can we make a fire?”
Pa said, “Next time we go camping, we’ll make a fire.”
“Can we have mushmellows?”
Pa nodded. “We can have mushmellows.”
“Can I have my own bag of mushmellows?”
“No.”
“But—”
“No.”
Ma tucked a strand of hair behind Little Bit’s ear. The burning cross soon disappeared behind us.
Little Bit pointed. “Deer.”
A fawn stood under the pines, long enough to be counted, then slipped into the shadows of the woods.
Ma said, “Fourteen for Letitia Bette.”
I said, “I quit. I give my points to Digger, so he wins.”
Ma and Pa always gave their points to Digger. Often we’d catch him looking at an animal that none of us had seen, and we’d give him those points, too. The only animals he would call were dogs and cats, and then he would only whisper, “Robberlee” or “Nax.” Robert E. Lee had been the neighbors’ dog in New Orleans, and Max had been their cat.
Little Bit said, “That’s not fair. Chris can’t give his points to Digger, too.”
Ma said, “He can give his points to anyone he wants, Letitia Bette.”
Pa said. “Life’s not fair.”
Little Bit said, “But we’re s’posed to try to be fair anyway.”
Pa nodded. “That’s about the size of it.”
“But that’s not fair,” Little Bit said.
Pa reached over and ruffled her hair. “Who’s my girl?”
“Me!” said Little Bit.
“Is that fair?”
Little Bit nodded vigorously.
Pa laughed. “No, it’s not. I’m just luckier’n I deserve.”
I pointed my pistol at her and whispered, “Bang.”
“Chris’s pointing his pistol at me!”
Ma said, “Did he hurt you?”
“No.”
“Then that’s okay.”
I stuck my tongue out at her.
“Chris’s sticking his tongue out at me!”
Ma said, “Chris, do you want a little bird to land on your tongue and go to the bathroom?”
I pulled my tongue in fast.
“Ha-ha!” Little Bit said, pointing at me. “Ha-ha!”
We drove on in silence, finally broken when Pa said, “Down here, you’ll hear white people call Negroes ‘niggers.’ If any of you use that word, you’ll get the whipping of your life. Understand me?”
I said quietly, “Yes, sir.” Little Bit bounced on the seat and said, “An’ don’t say ‘ain’t.’”
Pa said, “You know why?”
Little Bit said, “‘Cause ‘ain’t’ ain’t right!”
They laughed, and Ma smiled, and Digger clapped his hands together. I pointed a cap gun into the night and whispered, “Bang.”
#
Besides watching for animals, we watched for interesting billboards. U.S. 19 had been decorated with signs promising wonderous things if only we would travel a little further: Reptile World, Seminole World, The Old Plantation, Six-Gun Territory, Busch Gardens, Beautiful Miami, Scenic Tallahassee, Historic St. Augustine, all kinds of motels with “beach” in their names that usually added a line saying they were “right on the beach!” Ma thought that was funny and said we’d better not stay at any beach motels that weren’t on the beach. Pa pointed at two signs, for the Fountain of Youth Motor Inn and Suwannee Riverboat Rides, and said they were just down the road from where we were going.
Almost all of the billboards had pictures of pretty white women in one-piece bathing suits, but they also had snake heads and seashells and panthers and automobiles and clowns and old black men singing and fat black women laughing. None of us kids could read yet, but I knew most of the alphabet, and Little Bit and I had both learned to recognize a few words, especially when they were near pictures of our favorite meal: “Hamburgers! Hamburgers!”
Ma said, “Two nights in a row?”
Little Bit and I said, “Yeah!”
Pa shrugged. “It’s a vacation.”
So we stopped for dinner at a hamburger stand and had burgers, french fries, and chocolate milk shakes on tables set between two rows of parked cars. Behind the stand were older cars and a table where a Negro family ate. The air smelled of burnt meat and burnt gasoline, the smells of travel.
The men’s room was locked, and Pa thought I was getting too old to be taken into the ladies’, but they had a third door next to the first two. The word on the door didn’t start with “W” or “L,” so it wasn’t for girls. It didn’t start with an “M” or a “G” either; it started with a “C,” which looked like a broken “G.” When I tried the door, it opened, and there was a toilet inside, so I used it. When I came out, a Negro woman at the door looked at me and smiled slightly, and I felt bad. I hadn’t known anyone had two women’s rooms.
A white boy coming out of the men’s room saw me ducking past the woman. He laughed and said, “That’s the lightest nigger I ever saw!”
At the table I asked Ma, “What’s see oh el oh ar ee dee?”
She said, “Oh, that’s the bathroom for the colored people. Why?”
I shook my head. Ma took Little Bit and Digger to the ladies’ room. When she brought them back, Little Bit, holding Ma’s hand and twisting to look over her shoulder, said, “There’s colored men and women using the same baffroom!”
I looked, and it was true. A whole family, a man, an old woman, two boys, and a girl, had formed a line at the bathroom I had used.
Ma said, “Shh.”
Pa took his pipe out of his mouth, looked at it, and said, “They only get one in most places in the South. Wasn’t any different in New Orleans. You never noticed?”
I shook my head.
“You think they should be using the bushes?”
Little Bit’s eyes opened wide, and she shook her head.
Pa said, “All right, then,” and put his pipe back in his mouth.
#
After dinner, as we drove into the gathering darkness, Ma said, “Should we get a motel room?”
Pa shook his head. “We’re almost there.”
“Everyone’ll be asleep.”
“I’ll call the realtor.”
“You don’t even know if we have beds.”
Pa frowned. “There’s the mattress on the roof. You’ve got sheets.”
Ma nodded.
“I’ll call the realtor.” Pa was at the pay phone for a minute or two. When he came back, he said, “Don’t look like that, Susan. You’ll be sleeping in your own house tonight.”
Ma nodded. “Who wants to ride in front?”
Little Bit and I said, “Me, me!” Pa looked at Ma and didn’t say anything.
Ma said, “You rode up front this afternoon, Little Bit. It’s Chris’s turn.”
I grinned in triumph and jumped in. The front seat was best because you could see everything, including the car’s control panel. Since we almost never had more than the driver and a passenger in the front, you had an entire half of the seat to yourself.
Ma, Little Bit, and Digger fell asleep quickly. Pa found a radio station that played Johnny Cash and other good country music, but when the signal turned into static, I couldn’t find anything else on the dial.
I woke up sometime after that, when Pa said, “That’s the Suwannee River up ahead.” I saw the silhouette of a steel girder bridge against the dark sky, and a black ribbon of river to either side of us as we rattled over it. I knew the song, the first lines, anyway, and I would have sung them if I had been asked. Pa only said, “Watch close, son. The turn off to Dickison’s easy to miss.”
I sat up and squinted hard. The next light in the darkness was an electric sign for The Fountain of Youth Motor Inn, a small pink motel with a swimming pool in its courtyard. At the far end of the pool, water gushed from a giant bowl molded in concrete.
As we passed it, Pa said, “There’s a springs back behind the hotel. The owner said you kids can swim there any time you want.”
We drove for a mile. Pa said, “Damn,” pulled into the gravel parking lot of Gideon’s 19-cent Hamburgers, and turned around. For the first time on that trip, we drove the same stretch of road twice. I sat there, unable to say anything, but Pa pointed into a dark field and said, “Dogland.”
I saw the shape of a building and the outlines of some trees, and nothing more. Pa said, “Needs just a little bit of work,” and laughed, so I nodded.
When we got back to the Fountain of Youth Motor Inn, Pa said, “Damn it to hell,” and we turned around again. I looked in the backseat. Ma and Digger still slept. Little Bit lay against Ma’s shoulder, but her eyes were open wide.
Pa said, “Now, how’n hell’d I miss that turn?” Little Bit closed her eyes then, and I looked up front. In our station wagon’s headlights, a narrow blacktop cut off from the highway. Beside it, a sign said, “Welcome to Latchahee County.”
Pa turned onto the new road. A second sign said, “Florida 13” and a third said, “Dickison, 12 mi.” Pa said, “Almost there.”
Florida 13 wound through forests and farm land. Just when I was about to fall asleep again, we left the darkness to pass a wooden roadhouse called Red’s where electric lights burned and several speakers under the eaves played Jerry Lee Lewis very loudly for a parking lot filled with pickups, semi-truck cabs, and convertibles with their tops down.
Under the lights, Red’s was a movie set. A vignette played just for me while we approached: A black-haired boy and a blond girl leaned against a crimson Cadillac as they kissed. His hair was long and slicked back; hers was caught in a ponytail. He wore a white T-shirt; she wore a black blouse. He wore tight blue jeans; she wore tight white pedal pushers. I couldn’t see her face. He looked up as our station wagon passed, and he smiled at us. Then, as he put his lips to her neck and she arched her back in pleasure, the movie set was gone in the darkness.
We came to a motel and a gas station where Pa began to slow down. A sign said, “Dickison, Pop. 1137.” Pa said, “They’ll have to pop five more now that we’re here,” but I didn’t get it and Ma was still asleep.
Main Street consisted of several blocks of buildings, mostly one-story flat-roofed single-windowed structures that fronted on sidewalks shaded by water oaks, live oaks, and Chinaberry trees. We parked in front of a small storefront with white lettering on its window: “Central Insurance Agency and Real Estate, A. Drake, Prop.” The office was dark. A note had been tucked in the screen door.
Pa and I got out. He looked the note over and headed back for the car. I ran to get into the passenger seat, and we drove several blocks to Mr. Drake’s house. Over half of the houses in Dickison were old, high-roofed square wooden boxes with a couple of windows and a porch in front and a shed in back. The rest were new, flat-roofed rectangular cement-block boxes with a large living room window, either no porch or a tiny porch large enough for one person to huddle out of the rain, and a car port attached to the living room side of the house. Mr. Drake lived near the Christ the Redeemer Baptist Church in one of the new houses. A yellow light burned next to his front door, and a statue of a Negro jockey waited to hold horses next to the asphalt driveway.
Ma had woken by then, but she didn’t say anything; she just watched. Pa parked behind the Drakes’ shiny blue Buick, and he and I went up to their door. Pa pressed the buzzer. An eye and a mass of brown hair appeared in one of the three glass panes set in the front door, and then that door opened. A teen-aged girl in a poodle skirt stood behind the screen. She smiled and said, “Hi. You folks lookin’ for my Daddy?”
Pa nodded. “If he’s Mr. Drake.”
“Just a minute.” The girl ran back into the house, then returned with a tanned man in a white short-sleeved shirt and brown trousers.
The man stepped out, thrusting his hand toward Pa. Lots of people were taller than Pa, but Mr. Drake was almost a full head taller. “Mr. Nix? Wasn’t sure you folks’d make it tonight.”
The men grinned as they shook hands. Pa said, “Sorry to bother you so late, Mr. Drake. I have your check. We’ll take the key and get out of your hair.”
Mr. Drake had very little hair to get out of; his brown crewcut looked like a marine’s version of Friar Tuck’s tonsure. He shook his head. “No, it isn’t any trouble. I’ll get you folks out there and show you where everything is.” He lifted a hand to forestall any protest. “Got to let a man earn his living. Call me Artie.” He motioned toward the girl. “That’s Gwenny, my pride and joy.”
Pa nodded. “I’m Luke. This is my boy, Chris. The rest of the family’s sleeping in the car.”
“You put in a couple of long days.”
I said, “Yes, sir. All day long, sir.”
Mr. Drake laughed. “I bet.” He turned and called, “Gwenny, pick me up at the old Hawkins Motel. In about half an hour.”
“Sure thing, Daddy.”
“And don’t call that Tepes boy and tell him you’re home alone.” He pronounced the name “teeps.” I didn’t learn the spelling until I saw Johnny Tepes’s name in the Dickison Star several years later.
Gwenny may’ve exaggerated her indignation for us. “Daddy!”
He laughed. “‘Cause I will be expecting you in half an hour.”
She may’ve exaggerated her resignation, too. “Yes, Daddy.”
Mr. Drake asked Pa “Mind if I drive you out? It’s a sight easier’n following me or my directions.”
Pa squinted. “We passed the property on the way in.”
Mr. Drake laughed again. I could smell a little beer on his breath. “Oh, I doubt you’d get lost on the highway. But I thought I’d show you a shortcut. And it’s a mite tricky.”
Short cut was always a phrase of seduction to Pa. Suggesting that the route was difficult was the setting of the hook. Pa shrugged. “Fine.”
“Good.” Mr. Drake reached inside the door to pick up a long silver flashlight. “You want to carry this, Chris?”
I smiled. “Yes, sir!” The flashlight was heavy and twice as big as any of Ma’s little house flashlights. I loved anything that was bigger than it was supposed to be, so long as it wasn’t scary.
Mr. Drake said, “Don’t turn it on until we need it.”
I nodded. “All right.”
Gwenny Drake smiled at me. “Nice meeting you, Chris, Mr. Nix.” She gave her father a kiss on the cheek. “See you soon, Daddy.”
“And don’t drive over fifty. And take the highway!”
She laughed. “Yes, Daddy.”
At the car, Digger didn’t wake up for introductions, but Little Bit did. Mr. Drake said, “What a little charmer,” and Little Bit grinned. He added, “It’s apparent where she gets it, Mrs. Nix.”
Ma smiled, tired and pleased. “I see I’ll have to warn her about Southern flattery.”
“Oh, some folks just have to state the obvious, and I fear I’m one, ma’m.”
Pa said, “Get in, Chris.” I hadn’t been dawdling, but I slid into the middle of the seat fast and grinned. Mr. Drake got behind the wheel, Pa got in beside me, and we backed out onto Church Street. As he drove, Mr. Drake said, “Dickison’s named for Captain J. J. Dickison of the Confederate Army. In February of 1865, he turned back two regiments of Yankees who tried to march inland from Cedar Keys. He was nearly the last Floridian to succeed in turning back northerners.” Mr. Drake’s smile was in his voice, and Pa laughed, so Little Bit and I did, too.
I sat in the dim glow of the headlights and the dashboard and saw Confederate cavalry chasing Union troops while cannons exploded in the sky. My family came from the North, but I was Southern-born. Besides, the Confederates had better uniforms than the Yankees.
Mr. Drake shrugged. “The last time was a month later, some of our troops and a bunch of school boys repelled a Yankee invasion of Tallahassee. That was up north a ways at a place called Natural Bridge. Did you know Tallahassee’s the only Confederate capitol east of the Mississippi that wasn’t captured by the Union?”
“No,” Ma said. “I didn’t.”
“I figure that either means the Yankees never completely whupped us, or we’ve always been able to work deals with the North, whether we liked it or not.”
Pa said, “There been any hard feelings about us buying the Hawkins land?”
Mr. Drake glanced at him, then laughed and glanced back at the road. “Oh, no, sir, not at all. Not enough Yankees settling in Latchahee County to bother anyone. Down south and along the coast, some folks call it the North’s second invasion, but no one really minds. This time it’s an invasion of money, not soldiers, and no one’s come trying to tell us how we ought to live.”
Pa said, “Good to hear that. Susan and I’ll always be Yankees, I suppose, but the kids’ll be talking like little rebels in a month, I bet.”
Mr. Drake laughed. “Kids’re like that.” He turned onto a rutted gravel road, marked only by a sign saying County 666, and pointed a finger out into the night. “Captain Dickison turned back the Yankees near Otter Creek, but the townsfolk there were happy enough with their name. Around here, we didn’t much like our old name of Creek Town, so we took on Dickison in 1866. Our old name wasn’t on account of any creek running through town. In territorial days, a Creek Indian village was here.
“We’ll pass by Old Dickison, the site of Creek Town, in about half a mile. Isn’t anything there to see in the dark.” Which was certainly true. Away from Dickison, there was only the night. The whole of the world lay inside our car and in the strip of gravel that rolled through our headlights and beneath our wheels.
“The Creeks and the whites lived in peace in Creek Town, same as in Chiefland over in Levy County. And, same as in Chiefland, they were forced south as more and more whites moved in. Some of ‘em prob’ly ended up in the Everglades. Most of ‘em were prob’ly sent to Oklahoma after the Seminole Wars. Anyways, the only Creeks you’ll see around Dickison are the Dickison Warriors on homecoming weekend. We always put on a nice parade. Gwenny’ll be a drum majorette this year.”
He pointed toward a dark strip on the black horizon. “Old Dickison. Not a heap more to see in daylight. Folks keep talking about turning it into a county park. Maybe that’ll happen when they finish this road.” He laughed. “That’s kind of a local joke. Seems like they’ve been working on this road forever.”
We passed a big yellow grading machine and a little caterpillar with a shovel on the front. On the side was stenciled “Tophet Construction Co.” Drake laughed again. “See what I mean? S’posed to connect Dickison with a little beach on the Gulf of Mexico, open up the county for tourism. I wouldn’t hold my breath.”
Ma said, “History is your hobby, Mr. Drake?”
“Yes, ma’m. That and religion. If you don’t know those things about folks, you don’t know dirt about ‘em. And it’s natural enough to me, being in insurance and real estate. Gods and the past, yes, indeed, ma’m.”
He gestured again at the night. “Folks think this is a new land, call it the new world, but it’s old. People been coming to Florida for near as long as there’s been people. When the Spaniards came in the 1500s, two tribes held most of this part of the peninsula. The Timucua and the Apalachee. The Suwannee River divided their territory.”
Apalachee sounded like Apache. I began to see John Wayne in the desert, and warriors circling the wagon train.
“There was an Indian village around the property you’re buying, which probably would’ve been Timucuan. They called the river the Guasaca Esqui, the River of Reeds. De Soto called it the River of the Deer. But its last Spanish name was the San Juanee, the little St. John. Folks say the coloreds corrupted the name to Suwannee, but I reckon we all did, since that’s what we all call it.” He nudged me. “Might find arrow heads on your property. Would you like that?”
“Yes, sir!” I said.
“You find anything special, you let me know. I’m an armchair archeologist, too. But I know some real ones at the University of Florida. You know what an archeologist does?”
“No, sir.”
“An archeologist is an active historian. Gets right in there with the clues folks have left us and figures out how they lived.”
“Oh.” Archaeology sounded more like something for Digger than for me.
“The tourist board likes to say Florida’s belonged to five nations, Spain, France, Britain, the Union, and the Confederacy. That’s prob’ly ‘cause they only want to use one hand to count with. When the Spanish came, there were four nations already here, the Calusa, the Tegesta, the Timucua, and the Apalachee. We don’t know the names of the folks who came before ‘em, but we know of some that came after. The Creeks came down with the British colonists, before the American revolution, helping ‘em fight the Spanish and enslave the local Indians. Some of the Creeks stayed here and got the name of Seminoles. That means Runaways. You know about the Seminoles, Chris?”
“No, sir.”
“Great warriors, and good people. Before the U.S. owned this land, slaves would run south to be free. Some of them set up their own community, took over an old Spanish fort. Others of ‘em married into the Seminoles. A woman named Morning Dew who had some Negro blood married a warrior named Osceola, or As-se-he-ho-lar, which means Black Drink. That was a ceremonial brew, sort of like beer.”
I nodded.
“Morning Dew gave Osceola four children, and then some settlers carried her off as a slave on account of her Negro blood. In those days, they had terms for how much Negro you had in you. An octoroon was an eighth Negro, and I don’t know if Morning Dew was even that much Negro. Anyway, Osceola never forgave the Americans for stealing his wife. A war lasted seven years. Might’ve ended earlier, but Osceola came in to talk under a flag of truce, and the American leader—I hope a Yankee—captured him. Another Seminole, Wild Cat, kept the war going. Cost the U.S. fifteen hundred soldiers’ lives and over forty million dollars in expenses and property damage.”
Pa said, “Sounds like Florida’s got a history of losing battles.”
Mr. Drake laughed. “Don’t say that to anyone but me. Folks know I’ll say any fool thing ‘cause I went off to school.” He laughed again. “You’re right, though. A history of losing wars and losing lands. But keep in mind that every one of those losses was hard-fought.”
Ma said, “What happened to Morning Dew?”
Mr. Drake gave her the same look he’d given Pa. “You know, I’ve bored countless people with that story, and you’re the first to ask. I’ll find out.”
Ma said, “Thank you.”
A car slowly approached and passed us; our headlights flashed across a pale, elderly couple sitting close together in the front seat. Mr. Drake said, “Tourists, most like. Surprising number of people travel this road, maybe just to see where it goes. Which is a few miles past Dickison into absolutely nothing at all.” A new set of headlights approached from the north, then crossed the road far ahead of us, continuing south and letting us know we were almost to the highway.
Mr. Drake said, “There, the short-cut prob’ly saved you a whole minute and a half.” We came onto Route 19 next to Gideon’s Hamburgers. Mr. Drake jerked his head toward the tiny restaurant. “Gideon Shale’s one of your neighbors. Nice old coot. Makes a fine hamburger. As long as you don’t mind hearing a little Jesus every ten or twenty minutes, you’ll get on fine with him.”
“What is he?” Ma asked.
“What church?” Mr. Drake shook his head. “Baptist, to be sure. Near everyone down here’s Baptist. What kind of Baptist, I can’t say. He’s a happy one though. He thinks Latchahee County is the site of the Garden of Eden.”
Pa sounded as if his nose had clogged up.
Mr. Drake said, “Lot of people in Florida get their notions. For the most part, folks figure you can believe any fool thing so long as you let them believe their own nonsense.” He let his foot off the gas and flipped the turn signal. “This is all sacred ground around here.”
Ma said, “Oh?”
“Sorry, I’m getting so wrapped up in ancient history that I’m forgetting near history.” He eased the car onto a gravel driveway. “Mrs. DeLyon’s willing to knock five thousand dollars off the buying price.”
Pa made a grunt of interest.
“The old house burned down a couple nights back.”
Ma gasped. Pa made a grunt that only said he’d heard what Mr. Drake had said. I said, “Ooh,” and wished I’d been here to watch.
“Wasn’t anything in it. You must’ve seen it was in sorry shape when Mrs. DeLyon showed it to you.”
Pa grunted again. Ma said, “But where’ll we live?”
Mr. Drake said, “The manager’s quarters have been kept up nice.”
“Luke said they were small.”
“Yes, ma’m.” Mr. Drake parked our station wagon beside a pale green square building with large windows on three sides and a closed sign in one of them. The window lettering said, “Hawkins’ Home-style Cafe.” The headlights shone on a dirt trail through an overgrown yard to a low cinder block building with two doors. “If you don’t think you’ll be comfortable, we’ll head back into town and put you up at our place. Won’t be any trouble.”
“Well.” Ma looked at Pa. Pa stared out at the charcoal night beyond the car’s twin beams of light. Ma said, “We’ve come this far.”
Little Bit said, “We’re here?”
I said, “Of course we’re here. Where d’you think we are, there?”
Ma said, “Chris, everyone’s tired.”
“But she couldn’t even tell—”
Pa said, “Chris.”
I said, “Yes, sir,” and shut up.
Mr. Drake said, “I ‘spect I’ll need that flashlight now.”
I handed it to him and felt useless. Pa was already getting out of the car, so I scrambled after him, and felt a little better as soon as my cowboy boots crunched onto the gravel.
Pa said, “That’s two fires here.”
Mr. Drake said, “Nothing suspicious about that. The row of motel rooms burned last year ‘cause of a fellow smoking in bed. Did you know that cigarette companies add things to their tobacco so the cigarettes won’t go out fast when you’re not puffing on ‘em?”
Pa glanced at him.
Mr. Drake laughed. “Sorry. My daughter says I always take shortcuts when I drive and the scenic route when I talk.”
Pa nodded.
Mr. Drake turned the flashlight on and cut the night with its beam, revealing the charred ruins of a house. “Rooster Donati—that’s the sheriff—says a party got out of control. Someone built a campfire behind the house, away from the highway, and didn’t pay any mind to it till it was too late. Prob’ly kids broke into the house to, ah, fool around and forgot about their campfire. Or might’ve been tramps. Anyways, the only damage was property damage.”
Pa nodded. “Anything else I should know?”
“There is one more thing, but I’d prefer to show you around first. Reassure you that everything else is just the way you saw it.”
Pa said, “My check won’t clear for a couple of days. I’ve got plenty of time to assure myself.”
Mr. Drake nodded. “Let me give your family the quick tour and finish up the ancient history, first. If you don’t mind.”
Pa shrugged.
Mr. Drake smiled and handed me the flashlight. “Shine that over there, Chris.”
I aimed the light where he pointed. Alone in the night, far from any other tree, stood a huge live oak draped in Spanish moss. Jack the Giant Killer could climb that tree and find riches. The Swiss Family Robinson could build a city in its limbs.
Mr. Drake said, “They call that the Heart Tree. No one’s sure why. S’posed to’ve sprouted when Columbus landed. No one’s counted rings, but the botanists who’ve looked at it agree it could be that old.” He smiled at me and Little Bit. “That tree’s nearly five hundred years old.”
“Ooh,” I said.
He nodded at Ma. “Remember when I said this was sacred land? Before the Spanish came, the natives marked the trees in a ring five miles out around this place. Apalachees and Timucuans who’d been wounded in battle would come here to heal, and no one would fight on this ground. Some say it was the Heart Tree that was sacred. Some say it was Hawkins’ Spring, back behind the Fountain of Youth Motel. In either case, it doesn’t matter. Sacred ground.”
I nodded and looked at my family. Everyone was listening to Mr. Drake, except for Digger, who sat on the dirt and grinned as he picked up sacred ground and dropped it on his clean dungarees.
Pa nodded. “Plenty of firewood there.” Mr. Drake gaped, and Pa laughed. “Don’t worry. We’ll put a sign in front of that tree for the tourists, Maybe we could hire you to write its history.”
Mr. Drake’s nod was almost a bow. “I’d be honored.”
Ma said, “Where were the motel rooms?”
Mr. Drake tapped my shoulder and pointed. I turned the beam of the heavy flashlight and revealed a long scar in the earth that tall grass and small bushes were beginning to reclaim. Mr. Drake pointed toward the woods. “I think they dozed the rubble back into there, by the Hawkins’s garbage dump. Nothing salvageable in either fire.”
He took from his pants pocket a ring of keys with a round white tag, led us to the restaurant door, opened it, and snapped on a light mounted to the outside of the building, then a light inside. In the electric glare, the Heart Tree was just a big tree, the Hawkins Cafe was an old roadside restaurant, and the land where the motel had burned was ugly instead of mysterious.
As Pa went to turn off the station wagon’s lights, Mr. Drake waved at the restaurant and said, “You can tell it needs a good cleaning.”
Ma’s lips tightened, and she nodded. The windows and walls were thick with grime. Digger stood beside Ma, resting his head on her leg. She picked him up in both arms and whispered, “It’ll be fine.” He put his head on her shoulder and immediately went to sleep.
Mr. Drake said, “Maynard Hawkins wasn’t much of a handyman, and when the title went to Mrs. DeLyon, she saw no need to fix up a business that’d just compete with the Fountain of Youth. So there’s plenty to keep you busy here. But everything’s sound. It’ll be worth the work.”
Pa said, “Hmm.”
Mr. Drake held the screen door open for us. The restaurant was a dusty version of the places we usually ate in when we traveled: large windows, a few bare light bulbs in the ceiling. The cinder block walls had once been white or light gray. Eight or ten square, formica-covered tables were stacked in twos on one side of the room; the upper, upside-down tables thrust their iron pedestals into the air, where their feet made Xs. Next to the tables was a cluster of steel-tube chairs with pink padded plastic-covered backs and seats. Just inside the door, a counter ran along the wall, with twelve high stools bolted to the floor in front of it. The stools had dark bases, like the tables, but they ended in round seats with shiny aluminum sides and padded red vinyl tops. Behind the counter was a pass-through into the kitchen, next to scarred swinging doors.
Mr. Drake said, “A few hours with soap and paint, and it’ll be beautiful.”
Little Bit and I jumped onto two high stools and began to spin ourselves around. When we laughed, Digger woke up, looked at us without any expression, and went back to sleep.
Pa said, “This’ll be the souvenir shop until we’re ready to expand.”
Ma looked at him and Mr. Drake and didn’t say anything.
Mr. Drake said, “Everything works. The grill, the hot water, the refrigerator which was bought new three years ago, the freezer, everything. If you decide you don’t want to run a restaurant, you could sell the furnishings for a good price.”
Ma looked at Little Bit and me. “You’ll get dizzy.” We were already dizzy, but her warning was a fine excuse to stop spinning, so we jumped down from the stools. Ma looked at Mr. Drake. “The manager’s quarters don’t have a kitchen.”
“No, ma’m, they don’t. But you’ve got everything you could want for cooking right in here.” He pushed open the swinging doors to the restaurant’s kitchen. I ran in with Little Bit right behind me, and Mr. Drake laughed.
The kitchen seemed darker than the front room because its walls were hung with cabinets and its ceiling had been stained with smoke. A heavy table dominated the center of the room, big enough to butcher a pig or a person. Little Bit and I peered under the table, then raced around it.
Pa looked at Ma, his face still, waiting as if he could wait forever. Ma opened the oven, turned a gas burner on and off, then smiled the tiniest bit and nodded. Pa turned to Mr. Drake. “Looks fine.”
“Good. On to the manager’s building?”
Ma said, “What’re you children looking at?”
Little Bit and I stood in front of a closet door. I closed it quickly. “Nothing.”
Ma looked in the closet. On an old calendar, a naked blond lady was stretching out on red cloth like she couldn’t get comfortable enough to sleep.
Mr. Drake said, “I’m sorry. You may not be able to tell it, but some tidying up was done after Maynard left.”
Ma told us, “I think you’ve looked at that long enough.”
Pa smiled. I felt a little embarrassed about looking at a grown-up without any clothes on, even if it was a picture of a grown-up. As Ma closed the closet door, Little Bit pointed at the calendar and said, “She’s going to take a bath.”
Ma said, “You’ll have to wait until tomorrow to take yours.” She asked Mr. Drake, “Any surprises in the manager’s house?”
He smiled. “I surely hope not, ma’m.” He made a gesture like tossing a ball underhand, indicating we should all leave, then turned off the lights and locked the restaurant. He said to me, “You like pirates?”
I nodded very affirmatively.
“Pirates sailed up the Suwannee, way back when. So did smugglers, and during the War Between the States, so did blockade runners. There were bootleggers running liquor on the Suwannee during prohibition, so you might as well add gangsters to the list.”
Ma said, “Pirates, Mr. Drake?”
“Yes, ma’m. Blackbeard, Black Caesar, Gasparilla, Jean LaFitte, John Davis— You can just about take your pick.” Mr. Drake looked at me. “A pirate couldn’t think much of himself if he didn’t visit Florida at least once.” He pointed back at the restaurant. “Might be this place is named for a pirate.”
Pa said quietly, “Oh?” then added, “Keep that light on the path, Chris.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. We followed the dirt trail through long grass. Sand spurs stuck to my pants. When Little Bit, bare-legged in a dress, said, “Ow!” and brushed at her calves, Pa picked her up and set her on his shoulders.
Mr. Drake said, “Captain John Hawkins was an English pirate and slave trader. His ship was the Jesus of Lubeck, the first English ship to visit Florida waters. That would’ve been in 1564.”
I aimed the light at the building we were approaching. Like the restaurant, it was flat-topped, built of cinder block, and painted pale green. Two doors divided its front into thirds. Beside each door was a long louvered window with narrow horizontal panes of milky glass.
“Hawkins preyed mostly on the Spanish, I believe. No one knows if he really sailed up the Suwannee, but his log does mention a ‘beautefull sprynge where all do live in peace.’ Properly, the local spring’s named for Colonel Josiah Hawkins. He showed up in the early eighteen hundreds and built a plantation on these grounds. He said he was one of Captain John’s descendants, and he filed a claim for all these lands, but one of Mrs. DeLyon’s ancestors went to court arguing that the springs and the land around it were theirs. The law came up with a perfect compromise—it made everyone unhappy. The DeLyons kept the spring. The Hawkins got most of the land. The Hawkins and the DeLyons were at odds for nigh on a hundred years, but that’s all history now.”
Mr. Drake fumbled with his keys, then opened the right-hand door and asked for the flashlight. I gave it to him; he aimed it inside, reached in, and turned on a light. “You folks mind waiting on the porch?”
Ma and Pa both studied him. Pa said, “Kids can stand the sight of another calendar.”
Ma didn’t laugh. Mr. Drake said, “I won’t be a second.”
Pa drawled in the way that meant he was giving you one chance, and no more. “All right.”
I peeked in as Mr. Drake entered. The room looked like a motel room: blue block walls, a chipped dresser, a double bed with a beige chenille spread that had a couple of moth holes, a night stand that had a few cigarette burns, and a mottled black-brown-and-white linoleum floor. Mr. Drake disappeared through a door next to the closet, then came outside thirty seconds later through the further door.
Pa said, “Well?”
Mr. Drake laughed. “Didn’t want to alarm you, but Ethorne—he’s a local Negro who does odd jobs for Mrs. DeLyon—said he’d chased out a rattler when he brought the furniture. Mrs. DeLyon said if you have no need for these things, let her know and she’ll have Ethorne haul ‘em off to a needy family.”
Ma looked at Pa. He put his hand on her arm and said, “Now, Susan. You knew there’d be rattlesnakes.”
“Not in the house, I didn’t.”
“Well, there aren’t any.” Pa looked at Mr. Drake. “Are there?”
Mr. Drake told Ma, “No, ma’m. That one probably slipped in while Ethorne left the door open to fetch something. He said he looked all around to make sure there weren’t holes in the floor or the walls, or any likely nests under the foundation. I trust Ethorne. He’s a better man than most whites you’ll meet.”
Pa glanced at us as if he was going to say something, but didn’t.
Mr. Drake said, “Snakes don’t like folks any more than folks like snakes. You’ll see one now and then, but once there’s activity around here, they’ll keep their distance.”
Ma said, “If you say so,” and went inside. The rest of us followed her. While Ma put Digger down on the bed, I pushed open the sliding door of the closet and saw a room just long enough for me to sleep in.
Ma said, “That was thoughtful.” Someone had picked a handful of small blue flowers and put them in water in a Coca-Cola bottle.
Mr. Drake smiled. “Ethorne, I bet.”
“It was kind of Mrs. DeLyon to see we had beds our first night.”
“I mentioned your husband had said you’d be buying furniture when you got here. She’s a fine lady, is Mrs. DeLyon.”
I ran to catch up to Pa and Little Bit, who were following the route Mr. Drake had taken on his search for snakes. The right-hand bedroom’s inner door led to a small yellow bathroom consisting of a white porcelain sink and toilet, and a sheetmetal shower. A door opposite the first opened on the left-hand bedroom, which was a funhouse mirror image of the right-hand one. The furniture in the second bedroom had seen even more use than the furniture in the first, the walls were green, the blue flowers were in an Orange Crush bottle.
Ma said, “There’s not a lot of space for a family.”
Pa said, “Got a big yard.”
Ma smiled slightly, then shook her head. “All three children in one room?”
“It’s big enough for ‘em while they’re small. I never had a room of my own when I was a boy. We can build on, someday, or build a new house once Dogland’s a going concern.”
“Well—”
I went into the closet, closed the door, and called, “This is my room!”
Ma said, “That’s the closet, Chris.”
Little Bit said, “Do I get my own bed?”
Pa said, “Not tonight, little darling.”
Little Bit said, “I want my own bed.”
Ma looked at Pa. He said, “We can bring in the mattress. If we’re staying.”
Ma said, “Well—”
Mr. Drake spoke from the bathroom doorway. “I don’t want to pressure you. I’m serious about being happy to put you up at our place.”
Pa laughed. “A little hard sell, a little soft?”
Mr. Drake shrugged. “I won’t deny that I want you folks to stay. Time’s passing by Latchahee County, and it doesn’t have to be that way. The kids, white and black both, leave for the cities, where pay’s higher and there’s excitement every night. Seems the only folks who stay are losers and dreamers.” He touched his chest and grinned. “Myself, not excluded. But you folks seem to be dreamers and doers. I like that. Latchahee County needs people like you.”
Pa looked at Ma. “Write the check?”
Ma said, “Well—”
Mr. Drake said, “You can write it now if you want, but I won’t deposit it till you call and say to. ‘Cause there’s one thing I haven’t told you yet.”
Pa said, “I hadn’t forgotten.” His smile had gone.
“They’ll be building the interstate a good hour east of here. U.S. Nineteen’s going to lose some traffic in the next few years.”
Ma gasped. I didn’t know what that meant, but I knew it must be worse than rattlesnakes in your bedroom. I went to stand beside her. Little Bit took her hand.
Pa said, “We knew that was a possibility when we picked this place.”
Ma looked at him.
Mr. Drake said, “Planning for the worst doesn’t mean you expect it. We know that.”
Pa said, “Just means there won’t be as many tourists visiting accidentally. We’ll have to get them to visit on purpose.”
Ma said, “Can we?”
Pa said, “If that’s the choice. I assume they won’t be shutting down Nineteen.”
Mr. Drake laughed. “No.”
Pa nodded. “Then all we’ll really lose are folks in a hurry to get to south Florida. The ones who’re traveling for scenery will still come this way. They’re our real customers.”
Ma said, “If you say so.”
Pa said, “So. Write the check?”
We kids saw he wanted Ma to say yes. She looked at Mr. Drake. “It’s really all right to sleep here tonight and decide tomorrow?”
An automobile horn sounded up by the restaurant. Mr. Drake smiled. “That’s my girl.” Then he said, “That’d be fine with Mrs. DeLyon. The longer you stay, the more you’ll like it here.” He handed Pa the ring of keys. “Only thing you didn’t see was the pump house, and it ain’t much.”
Pa said, “The water’s running. It’s probably fine.”
“Give you a hand with the mattress?”
Pa looked at Little Bit. “Thanks.”
The horn sounded again. Pa said, “C’mon, Chris.”
Ma looked in on Digger, who slept, as always, quite soundly, then she followed us up to the restaurant where Mr. Drake’s new Buick blinded us with its headlights. Gwenny identified herself as the shadow in the driver’s seat by calling, “You ready, Daddy?”
“Just about. Was the Tepes boy at Red’s?”
“No, Daddy,” she said, very patiently, and she brushed her sand-brown hair forward over her shoulder. The collar of her yellow shirt with red polka dots had been turned up.
Mr. Drake smiled. “That’s too bad. Gwenny, this is Mrs. Nix and Little Bit.”
“Hey,” said Gwenny.
“Hi,” said Ma.
Little Bit said, just loud enough that I could hear, “Her neck.”
I squinted and stepped closer to the car. Gwenny smiled at me and said, “Hi, handsome.” I blushed and stood still.
Ma said, “Do you babysit?”
Gwenny shrugged. “Now and then.”
Mr. Drake smiled. “She’s the finest babysitter in Latchahee County.”
Gwenny looked at me, then tugged a thick strand of her hair forward again, hiding a reddened area at her throat. “Daddy tell you about the pirates?”
I nodded.
“He’s still working on getting Billy the Kid down here.”
Mr. Drake said, “You don’t remember old man Goode, Gwenny. Died when you were a baby. Some said he was the Kid, and Pat Garrett lied about killing him.”
Gwenny laughed. “Oh, Daddy.” Little Bit and I laughed, too.
Mr. Drake put his hand on my head and ruffled my crewcut. “I didn’t tell a single stretcher tonight, Chris. Might’ve set you up for a few later, though. ‘Cept for that business about old man Goode, which was Gwenny’s fault. He wasn’t really Billy the Kid.”
I nodded. “I knew that, sir.”
Mr. Drake said, “He was John Dillinger.” He held his hands out like he was holding a machine gun and went, “Ratta-tatta-tatta!”
“Daddy!”
Mr. Drake winked at me. I blinked both eyes at him, which was the best I could do. Ma smiled at him and said, “We shouldn’t be keeping you.”
“You kidding? Gwenny just got her driver’s permit. This is a great night for her, cruising alone and driving the boys wild.” Gwenny wrinkled her nose at him. Mr. Drake stepped over to the station wagon, where Pa had finished untying the mattress. “Here, I got this end, Luke.”
Pa grunted, then said, “Bring the blue suitcase, Chris.”
“Yes, sir!” I used both hands to drag the heavy case from the rear of the car.
Little Bit told Gwenny, “You’re pretty.”
Gwenny laughed and said, “Wish the boys thought so. But you, you’re cuter than a bug.”
I said, “I think you’re pretty.” Then I looked at my cowboy boots.
Gwenny nodded. “Then you’re my boyfriend. Want some help with that suitcase?”
I shook my head and began to haul it toward the house, clutching the handle in both hands and bumping my knees with every step. “Uh-uh.”
Little Bit said, “Chris has got a girlfriend, Chris has got a girlfriend.”
“Do not.”
Gwenny said, “You’re not my boyfriend?”
She sounded hurt. I said quietly, “I’m your boyfriend, but I don’t got a girlfriend. Okay?”
I hadn’t realized Ma had heard. She laughed and said, “Isn’t that just like a man?”
The night ended soon after that. Pa and Mr. Drake put the mattress for Little Bit in one corner of the green bedroom and pushed the double bed against the wall for Digger and me. Gwenny helped Ma put on sheets from a box out of the back of the station wagon. Pa wrote a check for the property after Ma said, “Well, all right.” Ma and Pa both shook hands with Mr. Drake, everyone smiled, Gwenny and Mr. Drake drove away, and I had to go to sleep with Digger.
A plastic nightlight plugged into an outlet in the cinder block wall kept our bedroom from becoming part of the kingdom of night. Its dim red light held the room in the borderland, in the land of shadows. The night lay under our bed and crouched in the closet and peeked through the louvers of the window over our heads. On the wall above our bed, a chameleon was perfectly still. Whether it was watching, sleeping, or dead, I could not tell.
Digger rolled against me. I pushed him onto his side of the bed. He didn’t wake. I hoped he’d pee on his side of the bed if he had to pee in bed; he could sleep in a damp bed, but I hated moist sheets and always had to get Ma to change the linen no matter which of us had wet them.
I lay curled in a ball and thought about pirates and cowboys and Confederate troops, and all the dogs that would be coming to Dogland, and Indians in the woods watching the settlers who’d come to build a tourist trap close to the banks of the Suwannee. I thought about Mr. Drake, who seemed like he’d be a nice father. I thought about Gwenny Drake, and wondered if I would marry her when I grew up. I don’t think I thought about my family; they were too much a part of me. I might have wondered whether Pa would be happy here, and whether Ma would like this place as much as she liked the pink house in New Orleans. At some point, my thoughts became dreams, and I slept through the warm, Florida night.
I woke at dawn when Digger climbed over me to get out of bed, and I woke again an hour later when Pa called, “Everyone up who wants breakfast!” Across the room, Little Bit was dressing in a T-shirt and jeans that had been mine a year before. Ma had put a stack of clean clothes at the foot of the bed for me. I dressed without caring what I put on. The only important items were my cowboy boots and my Roy Rogers belt with two holsters for cap guns, even though I only had one cap gun left, and its trigger was broken.
When I used the toilet, I sat on the front edge of the seat, watching the water beneath me, and scooted off as soon as I was done. I had seen a cartoon in a book at Grandpa Abner’s that showed a fish leaping out of a toilet bowl and a woman staring at it with big eyes. I thought that was funny and I knew it was impossible, but I didn’t think there was any reason to take chances.
Ma called, “Little Bit has to use the bathroom.”
I yelled, “I’m almost done.”
Ma called, “Are you off the toilet?”
I yelled, “Yes!” Ma opened the door and brought Little Bit in. Squeezing toothpaste onto my toothbrush, I said, “I wasn’t done yet.”
Ma said, “Your father’s making breakfast in the restaurant.” That meant we should hurry, so I slid the brush over my teeth while Little Bit sat next to the sink, and then I ran out of the house.
Stepping into the sunlight was stepping into Florida. I didn’t smell oranges — Ma had explained that oranges grew further south — but I smelled a humid pinelands that was not like the New Orleans suburb I had known. I drew my pistol and watched for Injuns and rustlers in the weeds or behind the bushes. I knew where they were: the clearing for the former motel and restaurant was enclosed on three sides by straight walls of the old forest. But no bad guys showed themselves as I followed the path to the restaurant, so I entered through the back door.
Pa grinned and said, “Morning, Christopher.” I said, “G’mornin’,” and sat next to Digger at the big table. In one skillet, Pa tended pancakes (bubbles were just beginning to appear on their tops as the first side fried) and in another, bacon, which sizzled and shriveled and, in its way, bubbled, too.
Digger had a bowl of Rice Krispies and a box decorated with the three elves, Snap, Crackle, and Pop. He was happily loading his mouth with milk and sugar drenched cereal, using a spoon that he held tightly in his fist. Whitish drool oozed from the corners of his mouth.
“Digger’s dribblin’,” I announced. Pa had piled plastic bowls and spoons in the middle of the table and set out a carton of milk. I grabbed the biggest bowl and heaped it full of Rice Krispies.
“He dribblin’ on you?”
“No, sir.” Several open mason jars were in the center of the table with spoons in them; some of the spice containers had gotten wet when we had packed in New Orleans, so Ma or Pa had transfered the contents. I grabbed a jar with white powder and put three spoonfuls on my Rice Krispies.
Pa flipped bacon and pancakes. “Then don’t worry about it.”
“No, sir.” I filled my bowl with milk until the cereal became a floating island, and listened to the snap-crackle-pop, which was never as good as it was on television. Then I put a spoonful in my mouth and said,”Bleh!”
Digger looked at me and grinned. Pa looked at me and said, “What is it?”
“Tastes bad,” I declared.
Pa flipped pancakes and bacon onto two plates and set them in front of us, then looked at my cereal bowl. He frowned and said, “You put salt on it.”
“Oh.” I reached for the syrup bottle to drench my pancakes.
“Finish your cereal.”
“Tastes bad,” I repeated.
“Waste not, want not,” Pa said, which had no meaning that I could understand. When I hesitated, he said, “That was your doing. Now you live with it.”
Ma and Little Bit came in then. Ma said, “Smells wonderful.” Pa grunted. Ma went straight to Digger and wiped his face, but when I looked at Pa, he didn’t seem to have noticed that I’d been right.
Pa gave plates of pancakes and bacon to Ma and Little Bit. Beside me, Digger used his fork to break apart the center of his pancake, then lift mush into his face. I sat there, looking at my huge bowl of salted cereal.
Ma said, “What’s wrong, Chris?”
I shook my head.
Pa said, “He dumped salt on his cereal. Now he won’t eat it.”
Ma said, “Why’d you do that, Chris?”
Little Bit quit eating to watch. Digger kept merrily breaking apart his pancake.
I said, “I thought it was sugar.”
Ma nodded and told Pa, “He thought it was sugar, Luke.”
Pa said, “I heard.” He sat down with his own plate of pancakes. “Everyone eat, now.”
I stared at the bowl.
Ma said, “Luke, if he didn’t know—”
Pa said, “He’s got to learn to eat what he takes.”
Ma said, “But if he didn’t know—”
Pa said, “He could’ve looked. He could’ve asked. The salt was right next to the pepper, and the sugar was way the hell off to the side.”
Ma said, “It was a natural mistake.”
Pa said, “Life doesn’t forgive you for natural mistakes. Everyone eat now.”
Little Bit looked at me with sympathy and began to eat. Digger seemed to have finished eating; he kept making mounds on his plate with pancake mush.
Ma looked at Pa, who was concentrating on his breakfast, then said, “Go on, Chris. It may taste bad, but it won’t hurt you.”
I shook my head.
Ma said, “If you don’t eat it, you won’t get to eat your pancakes. They’re good.” She took a bite to show me.
I shook my head again.
Pa said, “You took it, son. Now you eat it.”
I shook my head a third time.
Pa said, “What do you say?”
I whispered, “No, sir.”
Pa said, “On the farm, we ate when we had food. When we didn’t have food, we didn’t eat. Have you ever been short of food, Chris?”
I shook my head.
“Eat, then.”
“I’m not hungry. Sir.”
Ma said, “If he misses his breakfast, surely that’s punishment enough.”
Pa said, “I’m not trying to punish him. He’s old enough to be accountable for his actions, that’s all.”
Little Bit said, “I’ll eat some. I like Rice Krispies.”
Pa said, “Chris took ‘em, now Chris’ll eat ‘em. I don’t want to talk about this any more.”
I said, “They taste bad, sir.”
“Jesus! You think you’re going to go through life eating things that taste wonderful? Eat that cereal.”
I shook my head.
“You asking for a spanking?”
I shook my head again.
Ma said, “Luke? Surely he doesn’t deserve a spanking for—”
Pa said, “I gave him an order. He heard it.” He looked at me. “I’m going to count to three, Chris. If you haven’t started eating by then, you’ll get a spanking. And you’ll still have to eat the cereal.”
In my mind, I said, “That’s not fair.” I didn’t dare say it out loud.
“You understand?”
I nodded.
“One.”
I lifted a single kernel of cereal in my spoon.
“Real bites,” Pa said.
I scooped a spoonful of salted cereal and held it in front of my face.
“Two.”
“Go on,” Ma whispered.
I grimaced.
Pa said, “I’m not fooling, Chris.”
“I can’t!” I threw the spoon into my bowl, splashing the table with milk and cereal, and jumped from my chair to run. Pa caught my arm.
“Luke!” Ma cried. “Don’t!”
Pa bent me over his thigh and began spanking me, hard, with the flat of his hand. “I told you, damn it. I gave you fair warning.”
I didn’t make a sound. Pa’s spankings followed set rules. He spanked you until you cried. Little Bit understood that; she would cry after the first swat. Digger didn’t need to understand that; he would cry before the first swat. I understood that, but I also understood that men didn’t cry. What was worse was that I knew that men didn’t get spanked. The fact of being spanked was worse than the act.
Ma winced with each blow of Pa’s hand, and so did I. Little Bit and Digger stared in horror, fascination, and, since the spanking hadn’t been provoked by something I had done to them, pity. I always tried to keep my face from showing anything, but I doubt I was successful. I usually began to cry around the eighth or ninth blow, maybe to make Pa stop, maybe because I had to, and that satisfied everyone. This time was no different.
Pa gripped my shoulders to straighten me up from his knee. “It’s done. You can stop crying and eat.”
I wiped my nose with my hand and nodded.
“And clean up the table where you spilled.”
I nodded again.
Ma went to the sink for a rag. Pa said, “Chris made the mess.” Ma handed me the rag. I wiped up the spatter of milk around my bowl and wished I’d spilled it all. Pa said, “If you don’t stop crying, I’ll give you a reason to keep crying.”
I nodded and sat with my face ten inches from the bowl.
“Well?” Pa said.
I began to eat like a robot. Pa was right. It didn’t taste horrible. It didn’t taste like anything at all. When I finished the cereal, I ate my pancakes. They didn’t taste like anything, either.
By the time I finished, Digger and Little Bit had gone out to play. Pa said, “Learn anything?” I nodded, got up and walked toward the door. Ma said my name and reached for my arm, but I twisted away from her and went outside.
A green cement sidewalk circled the restaurant. I sat on it, around the corner from the back door where no one could see me, and stared at the ground. I said, “Ee-yuch!” several times, but I couldn’t make myself throw up. Ants had built a hill between the sidewalk and the gravel parking lot. I considered eating some to show everyone how sick I was. The idea made me ill, so I didn’t.
I was watching a line of ants carrying bits of a dead caterpillar into their home when a shadow fell over me. I didn’t look up, ‘cause I thought it was Pa, and then I knew it wasn’t. The person smelled wrong — smokey, but not like Pa’s cigars, and flowery, but not like Pa’s shaving lotion, and warm, but not like Pa’s sweat. I looked up.
I must have talked to black people in New Orleans, though I don’t remember any. I’m sure I gaped at the small, very dark man standing before me. He said solemnly, “How do.”
Ma and Pa had taught me to answer the greetings of adults. I said, “Fine, sir. How’re you?”
The man’s eyebrows drew together, and then he smiled, and then he laughed while shaking his head, “Oh, I’s very fine, yes, sir-ree. But why’s a well-spoken gentleman like yourself off a-cryin’ by hisself?”
I wiped my nose, which must’ve betrayed me, then wiped my hand on my shorts and shook my head. The man smiled again. “Mind if I sets?”
I shook my head.
“Thankee, sir.” He sat. We studied each other. He had a narrow moustache and iron-gray hair, which was not clipped close to his scalp like that of most black men I had seen. His hair was long, glistening with lotion and parted high on one side of his head. He wore faded Levi coveralls, a blue workshirt that had been laundered almost to whiteness, and heavy brown workboots, all of which seemed a little large for him. He looked like a singer Ma liked, Sammy Davis, Jr., but he dressed like a comic strip character I liked, L’il Abner, except for the Panama hat in his hands with an eagle feather in its cloth band. He said, “Go on and cry if you want. Don’t mind me.”
I said, “Wasn’t crying.”
He nodded. “My mistake. Not that it matters. Sometimes a man gets so frustrated he just gots to cry, and that’s all there is to it. Cleans you out, like. Shoot, I s’pose a man ought to cry every now and then whether he’s got a reason to or no.”
I squinted at him.
“They calls me Ethorne.”
“Mark Christopher Nix.” I wiped my hand on my shorts, then held it out.
Ethorne smiled, and we shook. His skin felt strange. His palms were hard and rough like tree bark. I decided that all Negroes must have skin like his. “Pleased to meet you, Master Nix. I seen you watchin’ the ants.”
I nodded.
“Ants is somethin’ else. They busy all the time, bustlin’ all about. I ‘xpect they think they seen it all and know it all. Got them a purpose, which is to work. They know who their friends is, which is ants from their hill. They know who their enemies is, which is ants from anywheres else. Think it’d be good to be a ant?”
I stared at him and shrugged.
He nodded. “Can’t really say I know, neither.”
Behind the restaurant, Pa called, “Chris?” Before I could answer, Pa walked around the corner. He looked at us, and I had time to wonder if I was talking to strangers, which I wasn’t supposed to do. Pa looked from me to Ethorne and said in a firm voice with a hint of a question, “Hello.”
Ethorne stood, stiffly and gracefully at the same time, and nodded. “How do, sir.” He didn’t offer his hand. “I’s Ethorne Hawkins. I do a li’l work for Mis’ DeLyon, up at the Fountain o’ Youth.”
Pa studied him for an instant, then held out his hand. “Luke Nix.”
Ethorne took the hand. “Mist’ Nix. This your boy?”
Pa nodded.
“He’s a fine boy.”
Pa glanced at me. “Sometimes.” I looked away, then back as they continued to talk.
Ethorne studied the yard. His gaze lingered on the burned ruins of the old house. “I ‘xpect you got a mess o’ work needs doin’.”
Pa nodded. “I expect so.”
“I work hard when I got a mind to. You ask Mis’ DeLyon.”
“And when you don’t have a mind to?”
Ethorne laughed. “Then I don’t work none at all, Mist’ Nix. That’s the best part o’ bein’ free.”
Pa smiled. “We can probably keep you busy, if you’ve a mind to work just now.”
“That’s what I hoped to hear.”
“Hawkins, you say?”
“Yes, sir. My people was slaves of Co’nel Josiah. When we was freed, all we kept was his name.”
Pa said, “Malcolm X didn’t.”
Ethorne smiled a little differently than he had before. It was almost like Grandpa Abner taking off his Santa Claus suit at Christmas. He was still the same man, but the smiles were smaller, and they meant more. “Folks ‘round here’s knowed me as Hawkins nigh on forever. Shoot, I knowed me as Hawkins nigh on forever, too. An’ I kind o’ like knowin’ the only folks still named after Co’nel Josiah is li’l black babies.”
Pa said, “I can see that.”
We all stood there, not really looking at each other. Several hundred feet away, cars passed steadily on the highway, mostly new cars of tourists and old cars of local people. Birds made bird sounds (I never paid attention to the kinds of birds that lived around us when I was a boy) and in the woods, something rustled the bushes, probably squirrels.
Pa said, “Dollar and a quarter an hour be fair?”
Ethorne grinned. “Dollar and a quarter an hour be very fair.”
“C’mon.” Pa turned. Ethorne looked at me, and we both followed Pa around the back of the restaurant. Ma came out with a broom in her hand, maybe to see what Digger and Little Bit were doing. Pa said, “Susan, this is Ethorne Hawkins. He’ll be helping us get the place fixed up.”
Ma brushed a lock of hair back from her forehead with the back of her hand, smiled her usual wide, delighted greeting, rubbed her hand against her skirt, and thrust it out. “Mr. Hawkins. Glad to meet you.”
Ethorne looked at the ground. I was the only one low enough to see his face; he looked shy or embarrassed or pleased. When he glanced up, he smiled easily and shook Ma’s hand. “Mis’ Nix, I’m most delighted to make your acquaintance. Please, call me Ethorne.”
Ma laughed. “Then you call me Susan.”
Ethorne shook his head and grinned. “Oh, no, ma’m. But you call me Ethorne. Mr. Hawkins was one bad, bad man. All I got is his name, and I wouldn’t be so content with it if I had to hear it all the time.”
Ma frowned and looked at Pa.
Pa said, “His people were slaves here.”
Ma took a quick intake of breath.
Ethorne smiled. “Long, long time ago, ma’m. Not forgotten, but gone.” He pointed past the woods, toward the Fountain of Youth Motor Inn and Hawkins Springs. “Wasn’t ‘xactly here, neither. The old house was up thataways, and so was the fields an’ the nigger shacks. Old house done burned. Fields’re overgrowed now. Don’t hurt me none to see it like this.”
Ma said, “The Colonel was a bad man?”
“I say that? Oh, I misspoke myself, ma’m. Gettin’ old. He was a hard man. He did good as he saw it, to whoever he figured needed it. That’s ‘bout all I can say.”
Pa said, “People have long memories around here.”
Ethorne laughed. “You been talkin’ to Mist’ Drake. Him and me, we live more in the past than the present, I ‘xpect. Most folks ‘round here are just folks, same as anywheres.”
Pa said, “You must’ve heard the joke.”
“Oh?”
“My Pa used to tell it. A house is for sale. A fellow comes to buy it, asks the oldtimer living next door how the local people are. The oldtimer asks how they were in this fellow’s last home. Fellow says they were mean ess oh bees. The oldtimer nods and says, a-yup, the locals are pretty much like that. The fellow decides not to buy the house.”
Pa glanced at me, and I looked away, as if I wasn’t listening. Pa said, “‘Nother fellow comes to buy it, asks the oldtimer how the locals are. The oldtimer asks how they were in this second fellow’s last home. Fellow says they were the friendliest bunch of people you were ever like to meet. The oldtimer nods and says, a-yup, the locals are pretty much like that.”
I threw a rock into a palmetto clump. It rustled the leaves as it fell.
Ethorne said, “No one’s payin’ a black man more’n a dollar an hour in Latchahee County.”
Pa said, “Can’t be true. I am.” He added, “I don’t expect you to do less work than a white man, so I figure I better not pay you less money.”
“Thank you, sir.” Ethorne put his straw hat onto his head, and the eagle feather bobbed. “Where you want me to start?”
“Got a lot of ground to clear. There was a scythe in the pump house when I was here before.”
Ethorne nodded. “I’s a fine hand with a scythe, Mist’ Nix.”
Pa said, “Luke.”
Ethorne said, “Mist’ Luke.”
Pa shrugged. “All right. We’ll call you what you want, and you call us what suits you. I warn you, I might not answer to son-of-a-bitch.”
Ma said, “Luke!” and looked at me.
Pa said, “Well, I wouldn’t. Chris doesn’t know that, it’s time he learned.” He grinned at me, and I smiled for the first time at him. Pa jerked his head. “C’mon.” He headed toward the pump house, a wooden, flat-roofed shack with peeling lime green paint.
Digger and Little Bit were playing in the gravel parking area, which was dotted with high, lone weeds trying to reclaim the land for the woods. Pa shouted at Little Bit, “Don’t play near the bushes. Might be anything in there!”
We walked up to the pump house, Pa leading, followed by Ethorne, then me. I kicked the dirt as I walked. I wanted to go away and play, but I also wanted to see the inside of the pump house, and Pa had not dismissed me.
He unlocked the padlock and opened the door, a plywood rectangle reinforced with two-by-fours and hanging from two rusty hinges. Some light filtered through two dusty windows. My first impression was of dirt, tools, and machinery. As the door opened wide, there was a sound like hissing or pebbles tumbling against themselves.
Pa stepped back fast. “Jesus Christ!”
Something like a fire hose moved in the gloom beyond the water pump and tank. Its eyes were bright beads. Two curved needles shone within its smile.
Ethorne said, “Move easy. Rattler don’t want no more trouble’n we do.”
Pa breathed quickly. I stared, unable to move until Pa said, “Back off, Chris. Slow.”
I stepped backwards, watching the snake undulate on the pump house’s wooden floor.
Pa said, “Guess we’ll have to buy a gun.”
Ethorne said, “You mean to kill it?”
“If we scared that thing off, would it come back?”
“Hard to say. If it thinks that’s home, most like it would.” Ethorne sounded sad.
Pa said, “Then we kill it.”
Ethorne said, “They’s a scythe in there, you say?”
Pa snorted a harsh laugh. “I didn’t look too close.”
Ethorne nodded and stepped toward the door.
Pa said, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
Ethorne said, “Me, too, Mist’ Luke.” He pushed against the half-open door. It swung against the far wall. The sound startled us all, except the snake. Sunlight didn’t seem to bother it. Its skin was like a chainmail shirt made of precious metals. Its eyes were jewels. Its flickering tongue was a taunt.
Ethorne moved slowly, like a man in one of the silent films that Grandpa Abner showed in his basement with the projector turned to half-speed. He approached the door as though his shadow, preceding him, had more substance than his body. He seemed to be trying to keep his shadow from falling on the snake, as if that much disturbance would make the rattler attack.
At the door, Ethorne peeked in, then reached his arm inside to feel along the wall.
Pa whispered, “You know how high a snake can strike?”
Ethorne shook his head. “Don’t aim to find out.” He withdrew his hand, showing us a shovel. “Scythe’s too far back.” He glanced at us. “Back off some, now, hear?”
Pa brushed his hand in the air at his side, trusting me to obey. I did.
Ethorne raised the shovel overhead like a spear, then thrust it down into the pump house. Something thrashed violently as the shovel struck the floor. Then Ethorne swept the shovel across the wooden planks, flinging something like a man’s fist out onto the grass. The thrashing continued within the pump house.
Ethorne whirled toward us, calling, “Stay ‘way from it!”
he snake’s severed head snapped its jaws open and closed, over and over again, bouncing it around in the long grass. Ethorne said, “Snake needs time to study out it’s dead.”
Little Bit and Digger had seen that something interesting was happening. Pa spotted them as they approached us. He yelled, “You kids, stay back!” Little Bit grabbed Digger’s hand. They stood, staring as the snake’s head continued to seek escape or a victim.
Ethorne turned with the shovel and plunged it back into the pump house. Pa and I turned to watch him sweep out the snake’s writhing body.
Little Bit screamed. I looked at her. Little Bit was still twenty feet away from the snake’s head, but Digger, laughing, ran toward it on pudgy, unsteady legs.
Pa shouted, “Digger! No!” Digger, usually the most obedient of us all, did not seem to hear. He stretched a small hand out for the shiny thing that danced in our yard.
Pa and Ethorne both ran forward. Pa held his arms out to grab Digger. Ethorne lifted the shovel as if he hoped to bat the snake head away. Digger stopped still in mid-squat, his hand six inches from the snake’s head, and looked at the two men running toward him. His smile faded. He squinted as if he was trying to decide whether he had done something for which he should cry.
The snake’s jaws thrashed once more. The head sprang into the air, its jaws open to