and pecking another smaller chicken behind its head until there was a bare raw spot and all of them squirting that shiny green chicken squirt neat in a dollop onto the dirt, Edith and I would both chew our gum and see if we could make bubbles. Edith would be gathering eggs and I would try to help her, but I couldn’t trust some of those red chickens until I had their heads pinned against the back of the roost box with a corncob. Most of the time, I would just hold the bucket for Edith.
“But look at this big brown egg,” she would say.
“Is it heavy?”
“Yes, but notice these dark specks along here. They’re almost the color of lavender.”
“They look like a face,” I’d say.
“Yes. And you’re a funny old Sanders Roscoe. Aren’t you?”
A little later, while we were in the kitchen, cleaning the bits of straw and the chicken squirt off the eggs, I’d say, “There. I did it.”
“Did what?”
“Blew a bubble. Look.” And I’d have a gum bubble about the size of a withered pea, perched on my mouth.
“Good for you,” Edith would say then. “How’s your daddy?”
So I saw quite a lot of Edith Goodnough during that time, and she always treated me in a way that made me want to keep going back there. My mother didn’t think much of it, though. My mother wanted to know what I did down there all that time, what we talked about. She said they weren’t our kind of people. But my dad told her that as long as I did my chores at home to let me be. He said I might learn something at the Goodnoughs’.
So about once a week I walked over to see Edith. I didn’t see Lyman very often, though. He was always out in the field, disking or stacking hay. And I tried to avoid seeing Roy at all. I had his hands in some of my dreams during those years, and I would wake up in the dark in my room with those raw stumps still there, just behind my eyes. I could see them whenever I closed my eyes, so sometimes I didn’t go back to sleep right away. His hands were all mixed up in that time for me. I didn’t enjoy the sight of them.
B UT OUTSIDE events finally caught up with the Goodnoughs too. By the close of the 1930s the madman loose in Germany had infected enough millions of other people with his madness that things over there had gone absolutely flat insane. When the butchery and betrayal carried over into the start of the 1940s people here in this country began to wonder what their part in it was going to have to be. There got to be a lot of talk about going to war, talk about taking action, and I suppose all that talk about doing something is what made it possible for Lyman.
The barn door that Lyman was waiting all that time to have left open for him, so he could squeeze through and take off running and never look back, did open then—not much; it was just a crack at first, but enough just the same for him to drive into town by himself one Saturday night,late in the summer of 1940, to drink beer in the Holt Tavern. He had his black suit on and a white shirt. He had a yellow tie knotted under his just-shaved chin. He opened the heavy door and stood there looking at all the people enjoying themselves in the smoky near-darkness.
“It was like he’d took the wrong turn somewheres,” Wenzel Gerdts said. “Like he’d come up unexpected inside the women’s outhouse. I mean he looked scared and interested at the same time.”
Wenzel Gerdts was telling this story to my dad the following Saturday afternoon. I was there too with my dad, standing on Main Street in front of Wandorf’s Hardware Store while my mother went across the street to shop for a hat. There were other groups of men standing all along the four blocks of stores on either side of the street. The men stood with one foot cocked up behind them against the brick storefronts or sat on the fenders of the cars parked at the curb, all of them talking in groups of three or four about the weather and corn and Roosevelt and war. Their wives were inside the
“But look at this big brown egg,” she would say.
“Is it heavy?”
“Yes, but notice these dark specks along here. They’re almost the color of lavender.”
“They look like a face,” I’d say.
“Yes. And you’re a funny old Sanders Roscoe. Aren’t you?”
A little later, while we were in the kitchen, cleaning the bits of straw and the chicken squirt off the eggs, I’d say, “There. I did it.”
“Did what?”
“Blew a bubble. Look.” And I’d have a gum bubble about the size of a withered pea, perched on my mouth.
“Good for you,” Edith would say then. “How’s your daddy?”
So I saw quite a lot of Edith Goodnough during that time, and she always treated me in a way that made me want to keep going back there. My mother didn’t think much of it, though. My mother wanted to know what I did down there all that time, what we talked about. She said they weren’t our kind of people. But my dad told her that as long as I did my chores at home to let me be. He said I might learn something at the Goodnoughs’.
So about once a week I walked over to see Edith. I didn’t see Lyman very often, though. He was always out in the field, disking or stacking hay. And I tried to avoid seeing Roy at all. I had his hands in some of my dreams during those years, and I would wake up in the dark in my room with those raw stumps still there, just behind my eyes. I could see them whenever I closed my eyes, so sometimes I didn’t go back to sleep right away. His hands were all mixed up in that time for me. I didn’t enjoy the sight of them.
B UT OUTSIDE events finally caught up with the Goodnoughs too. By the close of the 1930s the madman loose in Germany had infected enough millions of other people with his madness that things over there had gone absolutely flat insane. When the butchery and betrayal carried over into the start of the 1940s people here in this country began to wonder what their part in it was going to have to be. There got to be a lot of talk about going to war, talk about taking action, and I suppose all that talk about doing something is what made it possible for Lyman.
The barn door that Lyman was waiting all that time to have left open for him, so he could squeeze through and take off running and never look back, did open then—not much; it was just a crack at first, but enough just the same for him to drive into town by himself one Saturday night,late in the summer of 1940, to drink beer in the Holt Tavern. He had his black suit on and a white shirt. He had a yellow tie knotted under his just-shaved chin. He opened the heavy door and stood there looking at all the people enjoying themselves in the smoky near-darkness.
“It was like he’d took the wrong turn somewheres,” Wenzel Gerdts said. “Like he’d come up unexpected inside the women’s outhouse. I mean he looked scared and interested at the same time.”
Wenzel Gerdts was telling this story to my dad the following Saturday afternoon. I was there too with my dad, standing on Main Street in front of Wandorf’s Hardware Store while my mother went across the street to shop for a hat. There were other groups of men standing all along the four blocks of stores on either side of the street. The men stood with one foot cocked up behind them against the brick storefronts or sat on the fenders of the cars parked at the curb, all of them talking in groups of three or four about the weather and corn and Roosevelt and war. Their wives were inside the
Similar Books
