I really think I’ll be home soon. It seems like things are slowing down a little. We hear some rumors about peace talks and such, so we’ve got our fingers crossed.
I got your last batch of letters, and they mean a lot to me. So keep writing. Luke, your letter was a tad short, so write me a longer one.
Gotta run. Love to all,
We passed it around and read it again and again, then Gran placed it in a cigar box next to the radio. All of Ricky’s letters were there, and it was not uncommon to walk through the kitchen at night and catch Pappy or Gran rereading them.
The new letter made us forget about our stiff muscles and burned skin, and we all ate in a hurry so we could sit around the table and write to Ricky.
Using my Big Chief writing tablet and a pencil, I told him all about Jerry Sisco and Hank Spruill, and I spared no detail. Blood, splintered wood, Stick Powers, everything. I didn’t know how to spell a lot of the words, so I simply guessed. If anyone would forgive me for misspelling, it was Ricky. Since I didn’t want them to know that I was spreading gossip all the way to Korea, I covered my tablet as best I could.
Five letters were written at the same time, and I’m sure five versions of the same events were described to Ricky. The adults told funny stories as we wrote. It was a happy moment in the midst of the harvest. Pappy turned on the radio, and we got the Cardinals as our letters grew longer and longer.
Sitting around the kitchen table, laughing and writing and listening to the game, there was not a single doubt that Ricky would soon be home.
He said he would be.
Chapter 15
Thursday afternoon, my mother found me in the fields and said that I was needed in the garden. I happily unstrapped my picking sack and left the other laborers lost in the cotton. We walked to the house, both of us relieved that the workday was over.
“We need to visit the Latchers,” she said along the way. “I worry about them so. They might be hungry, you know.”
The Latchers had a garden, though not much of one. I doubted if anyone was going hungry. They certainly didn’t have a crumb to spare, but starvation was unheard of in Craighead County. Even the poorest of the sharecroppers managed to grow tomatoes and cucumbers. Every farm family had a few chickens laying eggs.
But my mother was determined to see Libby so that the rumors could be confirmed or denied.
As we entered our garden, I realized what my mother was doing. If we hurried, and made it to the Latchers’ before quitting time, then the parents and all those kids would be in the fields. Libby, if she was in fact pregnant, would be hanging around the house, most likely alone. She would have no choice but to come out and accept our vegetables. We could blindside her, nail her with Christian goodness while her protectors were away. It was a brilliant plan.
Under the strict supervision of my mother, I began picking tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, butter beans, corn — almost everything in the garden. “Get that small red tomato there, Luke, to your right,” she said. “No, no, those peas can wait.” And, “No, that cucumber isn’t quite ready.”
Though she often gathered the produce herself, she preferred to oversee matters. A balance to the garden could be maintained if she could keep her distance, survey the entire plot, and with the eye of an artist, direct my efforts, or my father’s, in removing the food from the vines.
I hated the garden, but at that moment I hated the fields even more. Anything was better than picking cotton.
As I reached for an ear of corn, I saw something between the stalks that stopped me cold. Beyond the garden was a small, shaded strip of grass, too narrow to play catch on, and thus good for nothing. Next to it was the east wall of our house, the side away from any traffic. On the west side was the kitchen door, the parking place for our truck, the footpaths that led to the barn, the outbuildings, and the fields. Everything happened on the west side; nothing on the east.
At the corner, facing the garden and out of view of everyone, someone had painted a portion of the bottom board. Painted it white. The rest of the house was the same pale brown it had always been, the same drab color of old, sturdy oak planks.
“What is it, Luke?” my mother asked. She was never in a hurry in the garden, because it was her sanctuary, but today she was planning an ambush, and time was crucial.
“I don’t know,” I said, still frozen.
She stepped beside me and peered through the cornstalks that bordered and secluded her garden, and when her eyes settled upon the painted board, she, too, stood still.
The paint was thick at the corner, but thinned as the board ran toward the rear of the house. It was obviously a work in progress. Someone was painting our house.
“It’s Trot,” she said softly, a smile forming at the corners of her mouth.
I hadn’t thought of him, hadn’t yet had time to consider a culprit, but it immediately became clear that he was the painter. Who else could it be? Who else loitered around the front yard all day with nothing to do while the rest of us slaved in the fields? Who else would work at such a pitiful pace? Who else would be dense enough to paint another man’s house without permission?
And it had been Trot who’d yelled at Hank to stop torturing me about our little unpainted, sodbuster house. Trot had come to my rescue.
But where would Trot get the money to buy paint? And why would he do it in the first place? Oh, there were dozens of questions.
She took a step back, then left the garden. I followed her to the corner of the house, where we examined the paint. We could smell it there, and it appeared to be sticky. She surveyed the front yard. Trot was nowhere to be seen.
“What’re we gonna do?” I asked.
“Nothing, at least not now.”
“You gonna tell anybody?”
“I’ll talk to your father about it. In the meantime, let’s keep it a secret.”
“You told me secrets were bad for boys.”
“They’re bad when you keep them from your parents.”
We filled two straw baskets with vegetables and loaded them into the truck. My mother drove about once a month. She could certainly handle Pappy’s truck, but she could not relax behind the wheel. She gripped it fiercely, pumped the clutch and brakes, then turned the key. We jerked and lurched in reverse, and even laughed as the old truck slowly got turned around. As we left, I saw Trot lying under the Spruill truck, watching us from behind a rear tire.
The frolicking stopped minutes later when we got to the river. “Hang on, Luke,” she said as she shifted into low and leaned over the wheel, her eyes wild with fear. Hang on to what? It was a one-lane bridge with no guardrails. If she drove off, then we’d both drown.
“You can do it, Mom,” I said without much conviction.
“Of course I can,” she said. I’d crossed the bridge with her before, and it was always an adventure. We crept over it, both afraid to look down. We didn’t breathe until we hit dirt on the other side.
“Good job, Mom,” I said.
“Nothin’ to it,” she said, finally exhaling.
At first I couldn’t see any Latchers in the fields, but as we approached the house, I saw a cluster of straw hats deep in the cotton, at the far end of their crop. I couldn’t tell if they heard us, but they did not stop picking. We parked close to the front porch as the dust settled around the truck. Before we could get out, Mrs. Latcher was coming down the front steps, wiping her hands nervously on a rag of some sort. She seemed to be talking to herself and appeared very worried.