“Who told you?”
“I asked Mrs. Foley at the hardware store. She said a crippled boy from the hills and his sister bought two quarts of white enamel house paint and a small brush. She thought it was strange — hill people buyin’ house paint.”
“How much will two quarts paint?”
“Not very much.”
“You gonna tell Pappy?”
“I am.”
We made a quick pass through the garden, gathering just the essentials — tomatoes, cucumbers, and two red peppers that caught her eye. The rest of the picking crew would be in from the fields in a short while, and I was anxious for the fireworks to start once Pappy learned that his house was getting painted.
In a few minutes, there were whispers and brief conversations outside. I was forced to slice cucumbers in the kitchen, a tactic to keep me away from the controversy. Gran listened to the news on the radio while my mother cooked. At some point, my father and Pappy walked to the east side of the house and inspected Trot’s work in progress.
Then they came to the kitchen, where we sat and blessed the food and began eating without a word about anything but the weather. If Pappy was angry about the house painting, he certainly didn’t show it. Maybe he was just too tired.
The next day my mother kept me behind and puttered around the house for as long as she could. She did the breakfast dishes and some laundry, and together we watched the front yard. Gran left and headed for the cotton, but my mother and I stayed back, doing chores and keeping busy.
Trot was not to be seen. He’d vanished from the front yard. Hank stumbled from a tent around eight and knocked over cans and jugs until he found the leftover biscuits. He ate until there was nothing left, then he belched and looked at our house as if he might raid it for food. Eventually he lumbered past the silo on his way to the cotton trailer.
We waited, peeking through the front windows. Still no sign of Trot. We finally gave up and walked to the fields. When my mother returned three hours later to prepare lunch, there was a small area of fresh paint on some boards under the window of my room. Trot was painting slowly toward the rear of the house, his work limited by his reach and by his desire for privacy. At the current rate of progress, he’d finish about half the east side before it was time for the Spruills to pack up and head for the hills.
After three days of peace and hard work, it was time for more conflict. Miguel met Pappy at the tractor after breakfast, and they walked in the direction of the barn, where some of the other Mexicans were waiting. In the semidarkness of the dawn I tagged along, just close enough to hear but not get noticed. Luis was sitting on a stump, his head low as if he were sick. Pappy examined him closely. He had suffered some type of injury.
The story, as Miguel explained it in rapid, broken English, was that during the night someone had thrown clods of dirt at the barn. The first one landed against the side of the hayloft just after the Mexicans had bedded down. It sounded like a gunshot — planks rattled, and the whole barn seemed to shake. A few minutes passed, and then another one landed. Then another. About ten minutes went by, and they thought perhaps it was over, but yet another one hit, this one on the tin roof just above their heads. They were angry and scared, and sleep became impossible. Through the cracks in the wall, they watched the cotton field behind the barn. Their tormentor was out there somewhere, deep in the cotton, invisible in the blackness of the night, hiding like a coward.
Luis had slowly opened the loft door for a better look, and when he did a missile landed squarely in his face. It was a rock from the road in front of our house. Whoever threw it had saved it for such an occasion, a direct shot at one of the Mexicans. Dirt clods were fine for making noise, but the rock was used to maim.
Luis’s nose was cut, broken, and swollen to twice its normal size. Pappy yelled for my father to fetch Gran.
Miguel continued the story. Once they tended to Luis and got him somewhat comfortable, the shelling resumed. Every ten minutes or so, just as they were settling down again, another volley would crash in from the darkness. They watched carefully through the cracks but saw no movements in the field. It was just too dark to see anything. Finally their assailant grew tired of his fun and games and stopped the assault. For most of them, sleep had been fitful.
Gran arrived and took over. Pappy stomped away, cursing under his breath. I was torn between the two dramas: Did I want to watch Gran doctor on Luis, or did I want to listen as Pappy blew off steam?
I followed Pappy back to the tractor, where he growled at my father in words I could not understand. Then he charged the flatbed trailer where the Spruills were waiting, still half-asleep.
“Where’s Hank?” he snarled at Mr. Spruill.
“Sleepin’, I reckon.”
“Is he gonna work today?” Pappy’s words were sharp.
“Go ask him,” Mr. Spruill said, getting to his feet to address Pappy face-to-face.
Pappy took a step closer. “The Mexicans couldn’t sleep last night ’cause somebody’s throwin’ dirt clods against the barn. Any idea who it was?”
My father, with a much cooler head, stepped between the two.
“Nope. You accusin’ somebody?” Mr. Spruill asked.
“I don’t know,” Pappy said. “Ever’body else’s workin’ hard, sleepin’ hard, dead tired at night. Ever’body but Hank. Seems to me, he’s the only one with plenty of time on his hands. And it’s the sorta stupid thing Hank would do.”
I didn’t like this open conflict with the Spruills. They were as tired of Hank as we were, but they were still his family. And they were hill people, too — make them mad and they’d simply leave. Pappy was on the verge of saying too much.
“I’ll speak to him,” Mr. Spruill said, somewhat softer, as if he knew Hank was the likely culprit. His chin dropped an inch or two, and he looked at Mrs. Spruill. The family was in turmoil because of Hank, and they were not ready to defend him.
“Let’s get to work,” my father said. They were anxious for the confrontation to end. I glanced at Tally, but she was looking away, lost in her thoughts, ignoring me and everybody else. Pappy climbed onto the tractor, and we left to pick cotton.
Luis lay on the back porch all morning with an ice pack on his face. Gran buzzed around and tried repeatedly to force her remedies upon him, but Luis held firm. By noon he’d had enough of this American style of doctoring and was anxious to return to the fields, broken nose or not.
Hank’s cotton production had fallen from about four hundred pounds a day to less than two hundred. Pappy was livid about this. As the days dragged on, the situation festered, and there were more whispers among the adults. Pappy had never owned $250 free and clear.
“How much did he pick today?” he asked my father over supper. We had just finished the blessing and were passing around the food.
“Hundred and ninety pounds.”
My mother closed her eyes in frustration. Supper was supposed to be a pleasant time for families to visit and reflect. She hated controversy during our meals. Idle gossip — chitchat about the goings-on of people we knew or perhaps didn’t know — was okay, but she didn’t like conflict. Food was not properly digested unless your body was relaxed.
“I’ve a good mind to drive to town tomorrow, find Stick Powers, and tell him I’m finished with the boy,” Pappy said, waving a fork at the air.
There was no way he would do this, and we knew it. He knew it, too. If Stick somehow managed to get Hank Spruill handcuffed and shoved into the back of his patrol car, which was a showdown I would’ve loved to witness, the rest of the Spruills would be packed and gone in a matter of minutes. Pappy wasn’t about to risk a crop over an idiot like Hank. We’d grit our teeth and just try to survive his presence on our farm. We’d hope and pray he wouldn’t kill anyone else and that no one killed him, and in a few short weeks the harvest would be completed, and he’d be gone.