Some Sweet Day by Bryan Woolley Page B

stood in a row there, watching us. Water dripped from my hat brim now, and Daddy’s, and I could hear it drumming on the tin roof of the tractor shed.
    â€œI didn’t come out here for no visit,” Daddy said. “I just want the answers to a couple of questions. When do you think you can get your crops in?”
    Shipp shrugged. Water was trickling down his cheekbones now, and spattering at our feet. I was getting pretty wet and wished Daddy would hurry so we could get back in the car. “It’s too early to tell,” Shipp said. “You ought to know that.”
    Daddy smiled and nodded. “Well, I just wanted to tell you to get them in as soon as you can, because we’re moving back. You better start looking for another place to go.”
    Shipp squinted. “Says who?”
    â€œSays I. I’m giving you notice, man. Be out of here, lock, stock and barrel, by Christmas.”
    Shipp grinned and stuck the rag in the hip pocket of his overalls. “And who’s going to work this place then? You?” His eyes started at Daddy’s eyes and traveled down his body, down the rain-darkened khakis to the shit-and-mud-covered boots, planted now in a shallow puddle.
    Daddy sneered back. His grip tightened on the crooks of his sticks. “That’s right,” he said slowly. “Me.”
    Shipp giggled. “Somebody’s been telling you stories, Mr. Turnbolt. Jack Shipp works this place. And them that put him here tells him he can stay as long as he wants to. They been telling him he might get a visit from some cripple in town. They been telling him to tell the cripple to come and talk to them if he had to talk to anybody. ‘Don’t let him make you no trouble,’ they said. ‘Just tell him to see us, and we’ll put him straight.’ I don’t know if you’re that cripple, Mr. Turnbolt, but it appears like you could stand some straightening out. I recommend those two gentlemen to you.”
    Shipp jumped back as Daddy’s stick swung out and up. He held it high over his head like a saber. He bared his teeth and groped forward with the other stick, slowly following it with one foot and then the other. Shipp took another step back, his grin fading. “Shit, man,” he said, “What you up to?”
    â€œI’m going to kill me a fucking sharecropper,” Daddy said softly.
    Shipp stepped back again, then stopped and grinned when he saw how slowly Daddy had to move. “Is that the way you did it in the war, soldier boy?” he said. “No wonder it’s taking us so long to get it over with.”
    Daddy swung his stick hard. He missed, and the other stick slipped. His body swerved, shuddered and fell, slowly, it seemed, like a tree, belly down, in the mud. I yelled and ran to him, but he pushed me away. His mouth, now muddy, flashed a strange grin, and tears filled his eyes. He planted his hands in the mud, lifted his top half, and dragged his legs slowly toward one of the column posts of the tractor shed.
    Shipp glanced nervously at me, and then at Daddy. “Shit, man, I’ll help you,” he said. “I didn’t mean nothing.”
    â€œYou keep away from me, white trash!” Daddy hissed. He wrapped his arms around the post and pulled himself slowly to his knees. “Bring me the sticks, Gate,” he said. He was breathing real hard. I held out the sticks, and he took one, and, bracing himself between it and the post, finally pulled himself to his feet. He stood puffing, looking at Shipp, then at me. Then he started through the mud toward the car. “Pick up my hat, Gate,” he said.
    When he’d lifted his legs over the running board and closed the door, he started the engine and turned on the windshield wipers. As I trotted around the front of the car, he was staring through the rain at the kids on the porch, and they were staring back at him. If they’d moved a muscle since the rain