Comfort Read online

  When I finally stopped, Daddy said, “How about we go down to the creek? I’ll wash your wound and we can clean it up proper when we get back.”

  He knew I wasn’t ready to face my family just yet. So we crawled out under the vines and Daddy knelt and helped me get on his back. When we got to the creek he set me on my favorite rock and took off my clumsy shoe and the steel brace that was weighing me down.

  I sat there for a while, enjoying the feel of my feet in the creek. Daddy dipped his handkerchief into the water and blotted at the scrape on my arm. It stung, but I didn’t complain because just the fact of him dabbing at it so gentle made even the hurting feel good.

  I thought how me and Peggy Sue used to come here and catch crawdads in tin cans. And how Junior helped us build rock dams to make deep pools of water. How I could jump from one rock to another.

  When Daddy finished cleaning my scrape he sat on the rock beside me. Then he reached behind him and picked up a stick. I seen from the way he studied it that he was fixing to whittle. Seemed like whittling was the only thing he ever done anymore without being asked.

  Since he was home from the war Daddy had made a whole collection of little animals. Cats, dogs, and just about any critter you can imagine. When he finished one he’d give it to Ida or Ellie and they’d run off and play with it while he picked up another piece of wood and started on it.

  I sat there with my feet in the water and watched how he turned the stick around, figuring out what was in there. “Daddy,” I asked, “how do you decide what to carve?”

  He held the stick out so I could get a good look at the shape of it. “What does that look like?” he asked.

  “A stick,” I said.

  Daddy smiled. I loved it when he smiled. “Look again,” he said. “Look harder. Deeper.”

  Well, I didn’t know how to look deep into a stick, but I took it in my hand and run my fingers over it and for some reason it felt friendly. It was short and stubby and all I could think of was how the green moss on the end reminded me of curly hair. I thought about Imogene who I hadn’t seen for months and months. And who I still hadn’t got another letter from.

  “I see a friend,” I said.

  “Well then,” said Daddy, “I’ll make you a friend.” And the first thing he did was start peeling the bark and curly moss away.

  The friend Daddy whittled for me didn’t look like Imogene. She was kind of flat and only three inches high, but she was all there—a whole person from head to toe. Daddy carved little curlicues into her head because I told him how I thought the moss was going to be her hair.

  And he even made little eyes, a nose, and a smile. But the best part of all was the crutches he carved into the sides of her. And if you looked real close you could see that she had a brace on one leg. And clumsy shoes.

  When he was done Daddy put it in my hand and folded my fingers around it and said, “There now. You got yourself a friend.” Then he pulled my feet out of the creek and dried them off with his big red handkerchief and put my brace and shoes back on and carried me back to the house.

  It done wonders for me, having that friend curled into my fist like that. I asked Daddy could he put it on a strip of leather to wear around my neck.

  “I don’t see why not,” he said. He had to make a hole in the top of her head first. And scrounge around for some leather. When he couldn’t find any, he took a lace out of his work boot and hung her on that. Then he put her over my head.

  It felt almost like there was someone close by who had been through polio too.

  I named her Comfort.

  8

  Imogene’s Songs

  October 1945

  I sat on the steps and watched Ida spinning Ellie on the tire swing. She was giggling and Ellie was squealing. Two hound dogs howled off in the distance. Probably Jesse and Butch. They were Junior’s dogs.

  Momma and Daddy were in the kitchen. I knew from the sound of things that Daddy was whittling. Momma was annoyed by the wood shavings that landed on the floor. “Leroy,” she said, “I swept this floor not ten minutes ago. Now look at the mess you’re making.”

  Daddy grunted and kept on whittling.

  Momma sighed a loud, drawn-out sigh. She’d been doing a lot of that lately—breathing out her frustration. Here it was October, and whenever she pushed him on the subject of work, Daddy offered some puny reasons not to go looking. “For one thing,” he’d say, “jobs are scarce. And for another, I thought you’d be glad for my help around here.”

  I could hear Momma in the kitchen arguing with Daddy even though he wasn’t saying a word. “Leroy,” she said. “How do you think I made it around here when you were in Europe? Don’t you think the war showed us what a woman can do when her man isn’t around?”

  Momma was right. We had both learned how strong we were when Daddy wasn’t there to do things for us. We could haul buckets and buckets of water out of the well. And fill the wringer washer and do a load of clothes and then empty the tubs and do it all again. We could plant the garden by ourselves. Well, actually Junior Bledsoe had tilled the soil, but only because he took over the tiller before I could start it up.

  Strictly speaking, Momma and I could get by without a man in the house. But I didn’t for one minute think I could get along without my daddy. And I didn’t see how Momma could either.

  Sitting on the steps and listening with every muscle to what was going on between them, I could almost feel the despair my momma’s words put on him. I knew he didn’t want to believe we could make do without him. He was the one that had always give us the courage to go forward. Ever since I was little I’d seen Daddy pull Momma into his arms when she started fretting over the washing machine that broke. Or worrying how they could afford to pay the light bill.

  I remembered how he repeated his wedding vows to her on those days. For richer or poorer, he would say. For better or worse. I’m with you and you’re with me and together we’re gonna make it.

  That rich-or-poor thing always confused me. One night when Daddy was helping me with my homework, I asked him about it. I was having trouble counting money, so he’d pulled some coins out of his pocket to practice with me.

  “Daddy,” I asked him, “are we richer or poorer?”

  I still remember how he laughed. “Well, now,” he said, “I reckon it just depends.” He scratched at his head, messing his hair in the process. “Seems to me we’re richer than some folks and poorer than others.”

  Well, I already knew we were poorer than Peggy Sue’s family. Her daddy owns a hosiery mill and they live in a nice brick house right along the highway. But I didn’t think we were one bit rich. “Who are we richer than?” I asked.

  “Hmm,” said Daddy. “If you ask me, we’re richer than just about anybody who don’t have what we got. Just look at us.” And he motioned to my family there in the kitchen.

  Momma was polishing the cookstove, trying to get every smear of grease off it. Ida and Ellie, who were just a few years old then, were sitting in a big washtub on the kitchen floor, putting their faces in the water and blowing soap bubbles. My little brother Bobby wasn’t even born yet.

  “When I look at my happy family,” said Daddy, “I feel downright rich.” He got up, went to where Momma was working, and pulled her against him. “As long as I got me a Myrtle, I’m the richest man in the world.” He gave my momma a long kiss. For a minute there I thought he forgot all about having an Ann Fay.

  But then he come back to me and my homework. He sat at the table and said, “When me and your momma got married, we promised to stick together whether we have money or not. It don’t even matter if we like each other or not. We’re staying together. And that makes us rich.”

  Well, it was obvious that my momma and daddy were in love. Even when they was annoyed with each other, I knew it would pass. But since he’d come home from the war, Daddy seemed to be annoying Momma a lot. And it didn’t pass as quick as it used to.

  I heard the scraping of a chair inside an
d then Daddy’s footsteps coming toward the screen door behind me. It squeaked when he opened it and I turned to look at him. He was taking the broom off the nail just outside the kitchen door.

  I watched him go inside and sweep up the wood shavings and push the chair real neat under the kitchen table and head back to the porch with the broom. Then he went past me to the johnny house without saying a word.

  When he come back I thought he might sit with me on the steps and finish his whittling—outside, where it wouldn’t matter if he made a mess.

  “Whatcha working on, Daddy?”

  He just grunted, so I felt like a bother for even asking. He went to the shelf at the end of the porch where we keep a bucket of water for washing up. He poured water into a basin and washed his face and hands. When he was done, he threw the dirty water in the yard and went inside. Without saying a word to me.

  I heard him shut himself in his and Momma’s bedroom. It was quiet then. Except for Momma sighing. Finally I got up and went in. Momma was rearranging her spices in the door of the green Hoosier cupboard.

  It seemed to me like she ought to rest once in a while. “Want to play a game of checkers?”

  “No. I don’t.” Momma sounded edgy. “I couldn’t sit still right now if you tied me to that chair.” That’s when I realized she wasn’t organizing spices because they needed it. She was just sorting out her agitation.

  Then Daddy called out from the bedroom, and his voice had an edge to it. “Would you be quiet out there? I’m trying to sleep.”

  Sleep? It was only seven thirty in the evening. Not even Ida and Ellie’s bedtime.

  I propped my crutches against the table and reached for the Blue Willow book that I’d checked out of the school library. But one of my crutches didn’t stay where I put it, and next thing I knew, it was sliding to the floor and taking the other one with it.

  Daddy hollered again. “What in tarnation is all that racket?”

  I was fixing to be exasperated with my daddy. Why did he think the whole house should be quiet just because he took a notion to go to bed extra early? I sat real still and tried to read, but I couldn’t keep my mind on it.

  At eight o’clock Momma said it was time to call Ida and Ellie in for bed. When I got outside, the girls had left the tire swing and were playing hopscotch in the dirt. “Bedtime!” I hollered.

  I picked up the basin and put it on the porch floor. I used the tin dipper from the bucket to put water in the basin. Then I threw the soap in and called for the girls.

  “Ida! Ellie! This is the last time I’m telling you. We’ve got school tomorrow so you better get in here.”

  “Last one there’s a rotten egg!” yelled Ida and she took off running while Ellie was still balancing on one leg.

  Well, Ellie tried to catch up but she couldn’t. So she accused Ida of cheating. That started them squabbling real loud, and all of a sudden we heard a banging from the other side of the porch wall.

  “Would you be quiet?” I hissed. “Daddy is not in the mood for your nonsense. Now wash your face and hands and then your feet. And don’t forget to brush your teeth.”

  When the girls was clean we went into our room to get their pajamas on. “Listen here,” I whispered. “You got to do this real quiet. Daddy is trying to sleep.”

  “Why?” asked Ellie. “It’s not even his bedtime. Is he sick?”

  I didn’t know the answer to that, but I figured Ellie had come up with as good a reason as any. “He must be,” I said.

  But of course the girls forgot to be quiet. They was still wound up from playing. They started giggling and making faces and it didn’t do any good telling them to hush. They couldn’t seem to stop.

  But then I heard Daddy loud and angry behind me. I turned and there he was in the doorway. The light from the living room was back of him and we only had a lamp on in our room. So he was mostly just a big dark shape with his belt folded in his hand. He raised it for us to see.

  “Do you girls know the meaning of quiet or not?” he asked. “If this racket keeps up I’m gonna give you something to holler about.”

  Well, the noise went from happy giggles to dead silence.

  Daddy just stood there for a minute like he didn’t know what to do with all the quiet. “That’s better,” he growled. “Now keep it like that.” And he turned to go, nearly bumping into Momma, who had come up behind him. She stepped back to let him pass. I heard his footsteps going through the kitchen and into their bedroom.

  Momma come into the room and put her hand on my shoulder. “I’ll put the girls to bed,” she said. “You go outside and get some fresh air.”

  So I did. I went out on the porch and leaned against the post. I wrapped my hand around my little wooden Comfort hanging there on Daddy’s shoestring. “What’s happening to my daddy?” I whispered.

  It wasn’t like he’d never spanked us before. But he never done it over a little noise. It was always because of outright disobeying that he would give us a couple of stinging swats with a switch off a bush.

  My daddy had never once used his belt to punish us.

  Other people at school talked about getting lickings with a belt—the buckle end, even. And Rob Walker said that when he got a licking, he always had to cut his own switch. If he didn’t get just the right size, his daddy would send him back for another one. “Get one that will sing while it makes you dance!” his daddy would say.

  I couldn’t imagine my daddy being that mean. But now, I was scared. I could still see how the light from the living room shone through the square frame of his belt buckle.

  While I stood on the back porch, being as quiet as I could, I heard the sound of singing. At least I thought I did. And for some reason the singing put me in mind of Imogene. Her face came to me, and so did a song. Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen. Nobody knows my sorrow…

  Was I imagining it? Then I realized something—the singing wasn’t in my mind. It was real singing, and it was coming from the little colored church out near Junior’s house. I stopped breathing for a minute, trying to hear. And then, I don’t know why, except I just needed the comfort, I headed toward that song.

  I sat on the edge of the porch and eased myself to the ground, picked up my crutches, and started toward the singing.

  The moon wasn’t full, but there was enough light that I could find my way. I knew I couldn’t wade through the chopped-off cornstalks in the field. So I went around the edge. Every now and then I’d have to pass a short row of leftover sagging cornstalks. They put me in mind of crippled old soldiers trying their best to stay on guard.

  The singing of Imogene’s people got louder as I walked. It pulled me away from home until I got to the other end of the field. I was wore out by the time I got there.

  Across the dirt road was a graveyard with old headstones poking out of the earth, and beyond that was the tiny white church with a yellow glow coming through the windows. There couldn’t have been more than twenty people in that little building. But the way they sung you would not have guessed it. Their voices were big and their song was like a bulldozer fixing to knock me over.

  By now they were singing another song. I had never heard it before. But every so often I could catch a word or two. Something about tribulation. And weeping.

  But it wasn’t the words that got to me. It was the sound of that song—the way Imogene’s people sung it—that wrung me out like a dishrag. Their singing put me in mind of a clean bedsheet billowing on the wash line. It floated up real slow, and down again just as slow. And it seemed like it carried me with it.

  I hadn’t wanted to sit down, on account of the problem of standing again with only a dried-up cornstalk to grab ahold of. But the song wouldn’t let me stay on my feet. So I unlocked my leg brace and let myself go—down onto the dampness at the edge of the field. I curled up like a baby and put my face into my hands. I felt the wetness of the grass against my elbows and the grit of the dirt on my knees.

  I hung on to the words of the song t
hey were singing. Something about tribulation and weeping.

  9

  Surprises

  October 1945

  My daddy was real sorry about flying off the handle like that. He didn’t come right out and say it, but he was extra helpful all of a sudden. Momma didn’t have to ask him to draw water, or light a fire in the woodstove when it got cool.

  He still didn’t get a job, though. One day he said he was going out looking for work, but he come back with something else. He walked into the kitchen and reached for Momma. She only give him the teeniest little peck on the cheek. Then she went back to putting food on the table. “Supper’s ready,” she said.

  Daddy grunted a little and turned to Ida and Ellie. “I left something on the truck seat for you. How about going after it before we eat?”

  The girls dropped the game they was playing and raced outside to the truck. Daddy sneaked a biscuit from the batch Momma had made for supper and slipped it into his pocket. Then he went outside too.

  I watched them through the window. Ellie got there first, but Ida elbowed her out of the way and yanked the truck door open. Before either one of them could catch it, a black puppy scrambled out.

  The kitchen window was shut, so I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I could see every little detail. Daddy made the girls start by letting the puppy sniff their hands, and then he pulled a biscuit out of his pocket and give a piece to each of them. They took turns feeding the dog.

  Mostly what I noticed about that dog was, it was the same kind President Roosevelt had. So I knew that even though Daddy had got it for the little girls, that part of it—the fact that it was a Scottie—was for me.

  I picked up my crutches and went through the living room and out to the front porch. Momma followed. I sat on a rocking chair and Daddy brought me the dog. I held him close and he licked my face. “How did you find a dog just like the president’s?” I asked.

  I heard Momma sighing and knew she was worried Daddy had spent money we didn’t have. “Well,” said Daddy, “of course I couldn’t afford a purebred Scottish terrier. This one is a mutt, really. But you can hardly tell it. Just look at that long nose and square jaw.”