Aim Read online

  I didn’t pay much attention to Granddaddy talking about the Brookford boys because my eyes kept wandering to that picture of Gideon Bledsoe. He looked so young. What was it like to fight in something so awful as the Civil War?

  “Junior.” Momma was calling. “You’re gonna have to do the milking.” That meant she’d given up on Pop.

  “Yeah, Pop,” I grumbled. “Reason I can’t play baseball is I gotta fill in for you when you take a notion to go out and get drunk.” I took the milk bucket and headed for the barn. While I was out there, it started to rain. The sound of it on the roof set up a rhythm for the milking. Afterward, I leaned into Pop’s mule and stroked his mane. “Grover,” I said, “it appears he’s out drinking again. Momma’s gonna be downhearted. Don’t it make you mad?”

  When I went back into my room, Granddaddy was getting off the chamber pot and pulling up his britches. “Left you a little something to carry out,” he said.

  I sure didn’t want to be dumping his dooky, but I couldn’t sleep with that smell in the room either. “Granddaddy,” I said. “That pot is for using in the middle of the night. We have an outhouse for the rest of the time.”

  “Hmph. It’s raining out there. Besides, I’m too old to be trotting to a johnny house.”

  Granddaddy wasn’t that old. Not even sixty, according to Momma. His legs worked just fine. But he thought he was too good for country living.

  I emptied the pot because, after all, what choice did I have? “Pop,” I said, talking to myself mostly, “I don’t much like your daddy either.”

  After washing on the back porch, I pulled up a stool and stayed out there, listening to the steady clattering of rain on the porch roof. It crossed my mind to bring my blankets and pillow out there and let the rhythm of it put me to sleep.

  Seemed like it had rained the whole month of July. Pop’s garden had so much corn he declared he could feed the state of North Carolina. He’d sold it by the dozen out along the highway. And more than likely a couple of bushels went to Wayne Walker for making whiskey.

  The two of them were probably together right this minute.

  Finally I headed for bed. But for me, bed wasn’t exactly a bed. Not since Granddaddy arrived. My bed was big enough for two people, but after three nights of him snoring and farting, I decided I’d rather sleep on the floor. So I’d piled me up a few featherbeds and grabbed my pillow and moved to the corner.

  It was up into the night and I was sound asleep when Butch and Jesse started howling from under the front porch. Someone banged on the door, so I got up and went to be with Momma, just in case it wasn’t Pop—or even if it was. Midnight surprises never seemed to turn out for the good. And this time it was the deputy sheriff, standing there with water dripping off the brim of his hat.

  3

  BAD NEWS

  July 1941

  The policeman leaned in and spoke up extra loud, but the rain on the roof still almost drowned him out. “Mrs. Bledsoe?”

  “Yes.” Momma’s voice was a whisper, but I could see the words on her lips. “What’s wrong?”

  “Could I come inside, please?”

  She stood there not moving. I knew she wanted to shut that door in his face and pretend her husband was in bed where he belonged at this hour of the night.

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “Come on in.”

  Momma sat in the closest chair—on the edge of it, like she didn’t plan to stay long. I could tell she just wanted that deputy to say what he’d come for and then leave. He stood by the door and let the water drip onto the rag rug she’d braided.

  He stuttered around for a minute or two and finally started to walk the floor, stopping in front of the mantelpiece. He picked up the framed photograph of Momma and Pop on the day they got married. Was he trying to figure out if that skinny lady in the picture was the same person as the heavyset woman waiting for him to speak? Maybe he thought he was in the wrong house. I sure hoped he was, because him being there had to mean something bad.

  Finally he put the picture down and turned to face us.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Bledsoe,” he said. “We found Axel over on Hog Hill by the side of the road. Ma’am, we need you to come and identify the body.”

  The body? What did he mean by that?

  But Momma knew exactly what the officer was saying. “He can’t be dead.” Her voice wobbled and cracked. “He was just here. He wasn’t sick. He’s never sick.” Which was a strange thing for her to be saying, considering how many times she’d told people he was taken ill. What she really meant was that he’d passed out from too much bootleg whiskey.

  All of a sudden I felt light in the head—like I was fixing to pass out. But I had to be close to Momma, so I sat on the arm of her chair and she sagged up against me. I put my arm around her shoulder and we sat there, quivering. She was twisting the hem of her chenille bed jacket and picking at its fluffs. Staring at it real steady, as if ignoring the policeman would mean he wasn’t even there.

  I heard Momma swallow, and I heard the scratchy sound of her fingers on her bed jacket.

  The deputy cleared his throat and shuffled his feet.

  “We better go now, Momma. He needs us to identify the body.” I couldn’t believe I’d said that. The body. As if Pop wasn’t a person, even.

  Later, when I saw him there on the table with a sheet pulled over him and his feet sticking out, I knew it was him by his shoes. Brown wingtips with a hole in each sole. Red clay caked to the edges.

  But Momma wanted to see his face. She sat there for a long time, pulling bits of grass from his thick brown hair and holding his hand—which they hadn’t done a spanking good job of cleaning up. There was some mud under his fingernails. So I fished his knife out of his pocket for her. She used the edge of that blade to clean under every single nail.

  I didn’t want to see how gentle she was, as if she thought that blade could hurt him. And I sure didn’t want to cry. I just wanted her to stop so the deputy could take us home. I wanted to crawl between my blankets and listen to the rain pounding on the roof and pretend that none of this had ever happened. “Momma,” I said, “the undertaker will clean him up proper. He’ll look real nice. You wait and see.”

  But she didn’t pay me no mind. She just whispered his name. “Axel Bledsoe. Have mercy, Axel. What have you done to yourself?”

  The officer said it seemed to be a normal death. No marks on the body. No foul play.

  Finally, after the coroner promised her she could see Pop again before the burying, the deputy convinced her to go home.

  He drove real careful because the windshield wipers slowed down every time he stepped on the gas. Water gurgled against the windows. It beat on the roof and swished under the tires, making a racket that bumped into my thoughts.

  Pop is dead. Pop is dead. The words bounced around, looking for a place to land in my mind.

  I heard other things—the crunch of leaves under our feet while Pop and me headed into the woods with our guns, Momma begging him to give up drinking, the sound of him coming in the door late at night, singing “Let me call you sweetheart.”

  For some reason, that was his stumbling-in-drunk song. I came close to hating him on those nights. Here he’d just done the thing Momma despised most, drunk himself senseless and acted the fool, for Lord only knows who to see. Why did he think he could sing his way back into her good graces?

  Momma deserved better than that. If there was anything she wanted, it was to have a man who was as upstanding as her daddy was. Momma came from good people who worked hard for a living and held their heads high when they went out in public. Only thing was, her family lived in China Grove, and she didn’t see them much. Maybe she would have, if Pop was different, but they didn’t have much use for him.

  Back home, I told Granddaddy that Pop had died. It was the wee hours of the morning when I came in, and I knew he was awake on account of the grunting sounds he was making. “Axel’s dead,” I told him. The grunting stopped. All I could hear was r
ain on the roof. “They found him by the side of the road. But he wasn’t hit by a car or nothing like that.”

  It was quiet for a long time and then Granddaddy spoke up. “The Yankees won,” he said. “DiMaggio got two hits.” Next thing I knew, he was snoring and I was on the floor wide awake with a childish song running through my head. It’s raining, it’s pouring, the old man is snoring.

  He didn’t even care.

  Maybe the two of them really couldn’t live in the same house and Pop just let Granddaddy crowd him out. Was it possible for a person to choose when to die? Was that what Pop had done?

  I felt like crying. Maybe it was because Granddaddy didn’t act the least bit sad that Pop was gone. What would that be like—to die and not have your own father give a hoot?

  I could’ve cried for myself, too. It wasn’t like me and Pop were connected the way Ann Fay and Leroy were. But I always wanted us to be. Mostly, I wanted the kind of family they had. Leroy carried his lunch bucket off to work every day and came home at the end of the week with real wages that his family could count on.

  I never had any reason for believing such a thing could happen to us, but that hadn’t stopped me from dreaming. I kept hoping Pop would turn himself around and become the kind of man that people didn’t whisper about behind his back. Now I knew for sure it would never happen. As a matter of fact, he’d just given them one more thing to shake their heads over and pity me and Momma for.

  When I pulled the pillow over my head and stuffed my face into my featherbed, I wasn’t crying for what me and Momma had just lost. I cried for what we never had in the first place.

  4

  FUNERAL

  July 1941

  His heart gave out. That’s what we told everybody. And it was true. But I could tell from the looks on people’s faces that they knew there was more to the story. I went to the Hinkle sisters’ house and called Momma’s people in China Grove so they would know that Pop was gone. When they showed up—Uncle Tag and Granny and Gramps and the rest of them—they kept asking questions about his whereabouts that night.

  We didn’t have any answers about what he did after he took the Hinkle sisters’ car back. He must’ve hitched a ride to Peewee Hudson’s sweet potato house on Hog Hill. There was sure to be card playing and drinking going on in the back room.

  But why did Pop start out walking toward home? That’s what I wanted to know. Pop didn’t mind a light rain, but it wasn’t like him to walk the roads in a downpour. And couldn’t he have caught a ride with somebody?

  In his funeral sermon, Reverend Price told everybody how Pop was a regular church attender—except when he was sick. Momma twitched when he said that. She was probably thinking about all those times she shook the reverend’s hand on the way out of church and explained to him that Pop was not feeling well. Again.

  Beside me, Uncle Tag cleared his throat. I knew exactly what he was thinking. My mind went back to the day I turned eleven years old. Momma had cooked a big birthday dinner and invited the neighbors and her relatives. Pop had made a table from boards laid across sawbucks. But he climbed onto Grover and rode off, saying he had a surprise to pick up for me. He didn’t come back in time for dinner. So, finally, after it was already cold, Momma started without him.

  Eventually he came. We heard him before we saw him. He was singing “Happy Birthday,” but the words sounded slow and mushy. When he climbed down from Grover he landed on his backside. I think everybody gasped or let out some kind of holler. That’s how I remember it anyway, like a chorus of worry that gushed out of them. Leroy ran to him, and with his help, Pop staggered into the house, singing “Happy birthday, dear Junior.” In that mushy voice.

  I still remember Momma standing there with both hands over her mouth, tears splashing onto her fingers and running down her arms. It was the first time either of us saw Pop drunk. But there were many more. Somehow, I knew it had something to do with my birthday. It was my fault. It had to be.

  The coroner said that Pop’s death was the result of his heavy drinking. But the reverend didn’t mention a word about Pop’s drinking habit. “Axel Bledsoe had a heart as big as Bakers Mountain,” he said. A whole bunch of amens rose up out of the congregation. All of a sudden Pop had turned into a saint instead of someone the deacons were constantly trying to pull back onto the straight and narrow. I saw Peggy Sue Rhinehart’s mother dabbing at her eyes. Even Momma’s family was acting weepy. But maybe they were all just worried about her.

  Momma herself didn’t cry once during the funeral. And it wasn’t because she didn’t care. I knew how she hankered after him when he wasn’t home and how she fixed him pecan pies because they were his favorite.

  I didn’t cry either, but I cared. Of course I did. He was my pop, even if other people wouldn’t want him for theirs. After all the hunting in the woods and fixing cars under the oak tree, how could he just die and not be there anymore?

  When the service was over, we followed the coffin down the aisle. There, at the last pew, was one of Pop’s sisters, waiting for us. Aunt Lucille took Momma’s arm and walked with us out of the church. She was headed toward the graveyard too, until her heels started sinking into the soft ground. Then she stopped. “I can’t stay,” she said. “But I wanted to pay my respects and tell you how sorry I am.”

  Momma nodded. “Will you be by to see your daddy?”

  Aunt Lucille looked off toward the trees behind the graveyard. “It figures—he couldn’t come to his own son’s funeral. No, I have to get back to my family.”

  “Where’s Lillian?”

  Aunt Lucille shrugged her broad shoulders. “Am I my sister’s keeper?”

  Momma let out a big sigh. “I guess not. But what about Hammer? We’ll need help with him, now that Axel’s gone.”

  You would think, from the way Aunt Lucille turned and walked away, that Momma hadn’t just mentioned Granddaddy. It was like all of a sudden Lucille was deaf as a dipstick. She hurried back to Uncle James’s 1936 Ford. I noticed James was in the driver’s seat, waiting on her. And my cousins were climbing in a tree in the churchyard. It seemed like someone had to die for me to realize Pop had a family. And even then I could barely tell. Who knew if we’d ever see them again?

  After Pop was in the ground, people came up to Momma and bragged on him. “Axel helped me bring the hay in before that first big rain,” said Garland Abernethy.

  Jerry Jones took Momma’s hand. “Axel fixed the brakes on my truck. And he didn’t charge me one red cent.”

  “No, of course not,” said Momma. “He wouldn’t.”

  She was right. Pop was bighearted that way. But wouldn’t it have been neighborly for Jerry to offer a red cent or two? Didn’t he think our family needed to pay bills? At least, when Pop worked for Garland, he’d get paid in hay or animal feed.

  My old fishing buddy Calvin Settlemyre dragged himself over to the graveside. I could tell from the hang of his head that he didn’t want to be there. “It’s real sad about your pop,” he said.

  As if I didn’t know that already. I just nodded. “Thanks for coming.”

  He turned away then and went back to the other boys our age who were catching some shade under a maple tree. It seemed like they’d decided to let him do the talking. A couple of them glanced in my direction but turned away when they saw me looking.

  It didn’t matter that much. They were mostly my Sunday-morning pals. Calvin was the only one of them I saw outside of church and school. And who knew if Ralph Settlemyre would ever take me fishing with him and Calvin again?

  Myrtle Honeycutt stepped up then. “Bessie, we want you and Junior to come over for supper, if you will. Miss Pauline and Miss Dinah are coming too.”

  The Hinkle sisters were planning to drive us since Momma’s people had to get back to China Grove. Me and Momma headed for the car with Miss Pauline and Miss Dinah. But Lottie Scronce stopped us. She grabbed Momma’s arm. “Nobody,” she said, “and I mean nobody, can sing ‘Amazing Grace’ the way your husband
could. I sure will miss his singing.”

  I should’ve been glad people were reminding us of Pop’s good points. But it seemed like they were trying hard to keep from saying what was on their minds—that when Pop died, he’d been out drinking.

  Lottie turned away then, and I opened the car door for Momma. We settled into the back seat.

  “Bessie,” said Miss Dinah, “we’re real thankful Axel fixed our car. Of course we insisted on paying him for his kindness, but we should have given the money to you instead.”

  Miss Pauline, who was driving, took her eyes off the road long enough to give Dinah one of her schoolteacher looks. I could tell she didn’t like her sister bringing this up. But Dinah kept right on talking. “If we hadn’t given him the money, maybe he’d have gone straight home that night.”

  It didn’t take Momma two seconds to come back at Miss Dinah on that one. “Axel’s death is not your fault,” she said. “Seemed like the minute he had a few dollars in his pocket, he had to go over to Hog Hill and turn it into something bigger. Thing is, he never won at poker. Or if he did, he’d swap his winnings for Wayne Walker’s corn liquor. And that’s what killed him.”

  We got to the Honeycutts’ then. Ann Fay was walking the front porch with baby Bobby up against her shoulder, patting him on the back. The twins were both sitting in the same rocker, watching for us. They jumped down and raced to the screen door to holler that we were there now. Leroy met us at the door.

  There was food on the Hoosier cupboard and the cook stove too—roast chicken, potato salad, garden vegetables, pickles, and blackberry cobbler. We dished up our food and sat down to eat. The twins jabbered about this and that, and every now and again one of the grownups attempted to start up a conversation.

  Miss Dinah tried to take our minds off Pop and the funeral. “Did you hear that Pauline retired? I can hardly believe she has finally extricated herself from teaching.”