A Land More Kind Than Home Read online

  “We’ll see,” my grandpa said.

  “I guess we will,” the sheriff said. My grandpa stood up from the steps real slow to let the sheriff pass. Then the sheriff opened the screen door and I moved out of his way too. He took off his cowboy hat and held it down by his side.

  “Where’s your mama at?” he asked me.

  “In the bedroom,” I said and pointed to the next room.

  I watched him walk through the front room and into the dining room, and I heard his boots on the hardwood floor, and then I heard him open the bedroom door.

  “Mrs. Hall,” he said. He closed the door quietly behind him.

  I looked outside and saw my grandpa standing at the bottom of the porch steps. He had his foot propped up on the bottom step, and he was looking up at me. It was the first time I’d gotten a good look at him. He had gray hair curling out from under his baseball cap, and he had gray whiskers too. His eyes were just as blue as Daddy’s, and his nose was crooked. I heard voices coming from the road, and my grandpa turned around and looked out into the darkness at the top of the yard.

  “Mr. Hall,” Mr. Gene Thompson’s voice said from out in the dark, “Mr. Hall, I want you to know that we’re all sorry for your loss.”

  “Stay away from my family,” Daddy said.

  I WAS SITTING BY MYSELF ON THE SOFA IN THE FRONT ROOM WHEN Miss Lyle came back inside the house. Her hands were full of washcloths that were soaked through with blood. She walked right past me toward the kitchen.

  “This is all just a mess,” she said to herself as she went by.

  I heard the bedroom door open off the dining room, and I heard the sheriff’s boots walk across the floor. He stepped into the front room and looked over at me on his way to the door. He put his cowboy hat back on and looked out the screen door. I heard my daddy and my grandpa talking quietly out in the yard, but they stopped talking when the sheriff opened the screen door and walked out onto the porch. He walked down the steps, and I heard him moving through the grass toward where I figured my daddy and my grandpa were standing.

  I could just barely hear all three of them talking, but they were being too quiet for me to understand exactly what they said. But then I heard somebody raise his voice like he was mad.

  “That ain’t your decision to make.”

  “It ain’t yours either,” the sheriff’s voice said.

  “It’s all right,” said Daddy’s voice. “He’ll run him home. It’s all right.”

  “You sure?” the sheriff asked.

  “Yeah,” Daddy said. “I’m sure.”

  “Can you take care of that boy?”

  “He’s my grandson, ain’t he?”

  “I reckon so,” the sheriff said.

  EIGHT

  IT WAS HOT AND SMELLED LIKE SWEAT IN MY GRANDPA’S TRUCK, and there were papers and stained napkins and balled-up cigarette packets tossed all over the floorboard. The truck’s windows were rolled down all the way, and I watched Daddy and the sheriff walk up the porch steps to go back inside Miss Lyle’s house. Mama was waiting on the other side of the screen door for Daddy. My grandpa put the key in the ignition and started his truck. When the engine fired up, it sounded like pieces of old metal were beating against each other under the hood.

  “Are my mom and dad not coming with us?” I asked.

  “No, they’re going to stay with your brother,” he said. “Just for tonight.” He pulled his pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket and shook one out, and then he pushed in the lighter on the dash to get it hot. “I’m going to carry you home and stay the night at your house, if that’s all right with you.” He looked at me and tried to smile. The lighter popped, and he pulled it out and brought the orange glow up to his face. When he lit up his cigarette, I saw that his fingers were twitching. He went to put the lighter back, but his hand shook so bad that he couldn’t hardly get it in. I heard it tapping against the dash until he finally fit it back in there.

  He left the cigarette burning in the corner of his mouth and pulled the gearshift down. He put his arm across the back of my seat and turned his head to back into Miss Lyle’s driveway so he could turn his truck around.

  The moon looked like it might’ve been hiding somewhere behind the clouds and the road was dark except where his headlights shined, but his truck was old and his headlights weren’t as bright as the lights on my daddy’s truck, even though my daddy’s truck was a pretty old one too. I couldn’t hardly see a thing except for what was right out in the road in front of us. His truck was so old that the insides of the doors had started to rust. When Daddy saw rust like that, he called it “car cancer,” and I’d heard him say that if you get it inside your truck you might as well give up hope and let it die. I reached out and touched the rust with my fingers, and it crumbled into my hand. I wiped my hand on my blue jeans and saw that it left a dusty brown stain.

  “This is an old truck, ain’t it?” my grandpa said, but I didn’t say nothing back to him.

  We rode alongside the river and I looked through the windshield down past the other side of the truck, and I could just barely see the water shining in between the trees in that little bit of moonlight. I thought about me and Stump and Joe Bill skipping rocks this morning, and then I thought about how long ago it seemed that we were all together down there on the bank. Through the trees I could see the lights from Marshall twinkling farther down the river. I knew we’d pass the church soon and if I wanted to I could look to my right out my window at it when we did, but I decided that I didn’t want to. I just stared straight out at the headlights, but I knew when we passed the church just the same.

  My grandpa took the road up to the highway, and I felt us climbing the hill and I heard his old truck pulling hard like it was straining to make it. When we stopped at the stop sign at the top of the hill, an ambulance turned off the highway and passed us and headed down toward the river from where we’d just come. The ambulance didn’t have its emergency lights on or its siren blaring, and I noticed how slow it was driving. I looked out the back window and watched its taillights disappear into the darkness at the bottom of the hill. When I turned around again, I saw that my grandpa was staring at it in his rearview mirror. He sat there just looking at it for a second longer, and then he put his foot on the gas and we turned left onto the highway.

  “YOUR DADDY AND ME TOOK A WALK IN HIS FIELDS THIS EVENING,” he said. “There’s a lot of burley tobacco to be brought in. A lot of work that’s needing to be done.” He sat there, and I could tell he was trying to think of something else to say so it wouldn’t be so quiet while we drove.

  “Mr. Gant helps Daddy do all that stuff,” I said, just to let him know that Daddy didn’t need him around all the time just because he’d decided to come back and surprise Daddy all of a sudden. I felt him look over at me, but I stared straight ahead at the road.

  “Did you know that when your daddy was your age me and him used to work tobacco together?” I shook my head no. “Well, it’s true,” he said. “I used to have me some burley patches, and I’d take your daddy out in the field with me when he was about as big as you. Now there’s a whole mess of tobacco in your daddy’s field, and I’m the one helping him.” I felt him look over at me again, and I turned my head and looked out my window and watched the rocky sides of the mountain whip past the truck in the darkness.

  “We’re going to need some help getting that burley in and getting it hung up in the barn,” he said. “Would you be interested in helping?”

  I didn’t answer him. Instead I laid my head back on the seat and closed my eyes and pictured me and Stump hiding out in the barn and spying on Daddy and Mr. Gant like we used to before Mama caught us and whipped us for doing it. Daddy and Mr. Gant have got the sled full of burley, and they’re carrying it inside the barn where it’s hot and dusty and dark. I like the way our barn smells, and with the burley hanging up in there and drying it takes to smelling sweet and I like it even more. I watch my daddy and some other men climb up the beams toward
the ceiling and they wait up there until Mr. Gant starts jerking the burley off the sled. It’s so quiet with none of them doing nothing but breathing heavy and passing those sticks of burley up, up, up toward Daddy. I think about looking up to see Daddy way up high off the ground, and I think about how if they’d let me help them my hands would get good and sticky from the tar and I’d try to pick it off my fingers while I waited on Mr. Gant to hand me another load so I could pass it on to somebody else until it ended up in the rafters with Daddy. I opened my eyes and took a quick look over at my grandpa.

  “You’d be a big help if you’ve got a mind for working,” he said. Then he said, “Let me see your hand.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Just let me see it,” he said. I held out my left hand, and he took it in his. His fingers were tough, and the skin of his palm felt thick and hard. He rubbed his thumb over my palm, and I felt his hand jumping and his fingers twitching like he couldn’t keep them still. “You’ve got them,” he said. “I figured you would.” He let go of my hand, and I put it back in my lap.

  “Got what?” I asked.

  “Farming hands,” he said. “You got hands just like your daddy. Yes, sir,” he said, “just like him.”

  He turned the knob on the radio and tuned it in to old-timey country music.

  “You can put it on whatever you want,” he said.

  It only took me a second of listening to the song before I knew it was Patsy Cline. Daddy used to play her records all the time and try and get Mama to dance with him. He said a sweeter, sadder voice never came out of the mountains. I listened to her sing, and I heard that it was a sad, slow song, but I didn’t change it. I wasn’t interested in listening to nothing else.

  “YOU WANT A COLD DRINK?” MY GRANDPA ASKED ME. HE’D PULLED off the highway into the parking lot in front of Messley’s store and stopped the truck under the little roof by the gas pump. I shook my head no because I didn’t want him thinking he had to buy me something just to get me to talk to him.

  “I’ll get you one just in case,” he said. He opened the door and got out and slammed it shut. The driver’s-side window was rolled down, and he folded his arms and rested them on the door and looked in at me. “What kind of drink you want?” he asked.

  “It don’t matter,” I said.

  “You like Sun Drop?”

  “It’s fine,” I said.

  “What about a Nehi Peach?”

  “It don’t matter,” I said again.

  He turned, and I watched him walk out of the light coming from under the roof and across the dark parking lot to the screen door that led inside the store. The fluorescent lights were bright in there, and they made everything right outside the store seem even darker than it was. Some folding chairs and a couple of rockers sat outside the screen door, and I knew Mr. Messley and some other old men would stay outside and talk and smoke pipes and cigarettes all day when it was hot. Daddy said Mr. Messley was so old that his spine had gone crooked and that was why he was so hunched over and always carried a cane. When he sat outside he leaned his cane against his knee, and he kept it there until it was time for him to get up again. When people walked by on their way into the store, they said, “Hey, Messley,” and Mr. Messley grumbled under his breath because he knew he had to get up and go inside just to see if they wanted anything.

  There was a bug zapper plugged in and hanging just under the metal roof by the gas pump, and I sat in my grandpa’s truck and looked through the windshield and watched it fry moths and mosquitoes. It glowed purple, and every now and then I heard it zap a bug and I saw a little spark shoot out. I could hear the crickets out in the shadows too, and I listened to them chirping, and then I heard my grandpa’s voice inside the store. I heard a loud noise like something had just crashed to the floor, and then I heard Mr. Messley and my grandpa yelling at each other.

  My grandpa pushed open the screen door so hard that it slammed against the wall and swung back and slammed shut again. Mr. Messley opened the screen door behind my grandpa and came hobbling outside with his cane like he was chasing him. His face was red and angry-looking, and he was shaking his fist.

  “I ain’t never done it once on a Sunday!” he hollered. “And I sure as hell ain’t going to start doing it for you!”

  My grandpa walked toward the truck, but he stopped and turned around and looked at Mr. Messley. He stood there and stared at him for a minute like maybe he was thinking about punching him, and I pictured him hollering for my daddy and running through the yard before he kicked that man in the face, and in my mind I watched that man’s nose spray blood all over his shirt. But my grandpa didn’t do nothing to Mr. Messley. He just stood there and stared at him. The sound of that bug lamp zapping those moths was the only thing I could hear. I couldn’t even hear those crickets now. My grandpa opened the door to the truck, and Mr. Messley went back inside. I could see him watching us through the screen door.

  My grandpa slammed the door, and it made the whole truck shake. “Goddamn it!” he said. He punched the steering wheel as hard as he could, and it made the horn honk. “Goddamn it,” he said again. He put both his hands on the steering wheel like he might try and tear it off and throw it out the window, and his knuckles went white because he squeezed it so tight.

  “You better get on out of here!” Mr. Messley hollered from behind the screen door.

  My grandpa looked over at him, and then he cranked the engine and pulled down the gearshift and stomped on the pedal. The tires squealed, and we flew out of the parking lot and turned onto the highway and then it was quiet again except for the sound of the engine carrying us up the hill away from the lights of Mr. Messley’s store.

  All that hollering had scared me, especially after what I’d seen at Miss Lyle’s house, and I tried as hard as I could to keep from crying. I didn’t want my grandpa to see me, and I turned my head to let the air come in the window and dry my face. I wanted to stop crying once and for all, but I couldn’t. I’d just about given myself a headache with all the crying I’d already done.

  My grandpa reached over and patted my leg. He had hands like Daddy too, and it felt like sandpaper scratching against my blue jeans. I pulled my feet up into the seat, and I wrapped my arms around my knees to make it harder for him to touch me.

  “Hey, buddy,” he said. “It’s all right. I didn’t mean for none of that to scare you. Messley’s a friend of mine. It’s all right; I don’t want you being scared of me.”

  I quit crying and sat up straight and put my feet back on the floorboard and used my shirttail to wipe the tears out of my eyes.

  “I ain’t scared of you,” I said.

  My grandpa looked over at me, and then he looked back at the road. He got out his pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and shook one loose and put it in his mouth. He pushed the lighter in and waited for it to pop.

  “You shouldn’t be,” he said. “You shouldn’t be scared of me.”

  NINE

  MY GRANDPA STOPPED HIS TRUCK IN FRONT OF OUR HOUSE, and he just sat there and looked up at the porch like he hadn’t ever seen the house before. I looked past him out the truck’s open window to where the shadow of the barn leaned toward the ridge on the other side of the yard. When I looked closer, I saw a bunch of tiny lights flying around in the darkness.

  “Look at all them fireflies,” my grandpa said. He looked over at me. “You want to catch one?”

  “No,” I told him. “I just want to go inside.”

  Me and Stump used to catch lightning bugs all the time and put them in Mama’s Mason jars, but they didn’t do nothing once they were in there except beat their wings against the glass. Then they’d start to smell funny and they’d just up and die before you knew it. Daddy said they died so quick because they didn’t have any air down in there, and he showed us how to punch holes in the lids with nails so they didn’t get smothered to death. That was just too much work to think about right then and I didn’t feel like messing with them, especially without St
ump. He was the one who liked catching them anyway. He liked to turn the lights out and sit the Mason jar in the middle of our bed and get down on his knees and look in at it and wait for it to glow. Sometimes I’d get down on my knees on the other side of the bed and look through the Mason jar at Stump’s face. It made his eyes and his nose and mouth all different sizes, and after a while looking at him was like looking through a magnifying glass. He’d kneel there by the bed like he was praying and wait for the lightning bug to glow, and when it did I could just barely see him smiling through the glass with that yellow light spread out across his cheeks.

  “Your face looks funny,” I’d tell him, but he’d just sit there and watch that lightning bug and wait for it to glow again.

  The Christmas before, when I was in the second grade, my teacher, Miss Bryant, taught us how to make Christmas tree ornaments out of nothing but clay and pipe cleaners. She said we should make an ornament for somebody in our family for Christmas to show them how much we loved them. I thought about making a cross for Mama, but it would’ve been too easy and too skinny and it wouldn’t have looked much like anything hanging on a big old tree. I wanted to make a tractor for Daddy, but it was too hard. I decided I’d make me a firefly and give it to Stump since he liked looking at them so much. I rolled out a piece of that clay until it was about as long as my pinky finger and just a little bit fatter. And then I bent two pipe cleaners into the shape of wings and stuck them in the clay before it dried. The next day, after it was all dry, I dipped the bug’s tail into some yellow paint. It looked pretty good to me, and Miss Bryant thought so too.

  Mama made a fuss over it when I brought it home from school, and then she hung it on our Christmas tree after Daddy’d sat it up in the front room. I showed Stump where it was hanging on the tree, and even though he wouldn’t touch it he stood there and looked at it up close for a long time. I reached out and poked it, and it swung back and forth on the branch like it was flying around.