they learn all about mean.
Maybe Mr. Frank was right the first time about all of us O'Donnells. Mean just makes more mean.
Finally, Pappy tells his story of thieving Mr. Frank and it is told all night again and again, each time the laughter rising louder and louder when Pappy says low and serious, "You know, they used to call him 'Shanks.'" And that gets everybody laughing even louder and I can't do a thing about any of it.
After all the fun and carrying on, and after all the women and children leave, the men stay behind and Pappy's talk turns serious. He talks about what a terrible, sorrowful job Ulysses Grant is doing in Washington and how ex-Confederates have to work hard to get their vote back, seeing how they are now banned from voting. He says it's not right to fight and fight for your country, then come home and not be able to vote. He
says
he wishes he'd never seen the violence and slaughter he saw at the Battle of Franklin, but to hear him tell it, I'm not so sure. For five hours his commander charged his soldiers to move forward. Seventeen hundred and fifty of
them killed, 3,800 wounded, 702 missing. "My flesh trembles when I think of it. Would to God that I never witnessed such a scene."
We hear a screech owl.
In the Bloody Angle area at Spotsylvania, Pappy says he and his repelled thousands of charging Yankees at Fort Gregg, throwing rocks when ammunition gave out. Some of them even went with Robert E. Lee when he surrendered at Appomattox. They called themselves the Smith County Defenders because they weren't fighting for anythingâthey were defending.
"So tell me," Pappy says. "We come home, broken, and we're supposed to stand aside and watch those colored boys vote while we can't?"
I stay down low under my quilt, and as I listen I think,
How much of this meanness I see now started with warring? How much of all these everyday violent ways began with battlefield battles?
Mr. Smith, Pappy, and so many other men were paid and taught to kill for a cause, then they lost and they were supposed to go home peaceful, legally bound now to a new united country. Wasn't that asking too much? Who thought of these rules?
"I'm glad Grant said for Mississippi to work it out. I don't want no government handouts," Pappy says.
"The Klan don't have no use for the carpetbaggers and scallywags making the rules," somebody says. "Don't have no use for them no way."
"You hear that fellow from Maine is planning to run for governor of Mississippi? What's his name, Ames?" Pappy says.
I hear, "Jesus God Almighty."
"They look down on us; all of them do up north," Pappy says. "But I tell you what. I'd rather be somebody's enemy than someone's loser. Course, I'd rather be neither. I'd rather just be Mark O'Donnell, only better off, but how am I supposed to do that?" He stares at the fire, thinking on the circle he just talked himself into. His face is filled with furrows and canals where dirt has caked in. He still parts his hair down the middle, but that's only when he parts his hair. Tonight it's slicked back, then thrown off to both sides helter-skelter. His ears poke out uneven and his chin has a cleft that Momma always liked. The worry lines across Pappy's forehead look like all the rivers running in these parts, rivers that don't ever meet up and don't ever seem to end.
When I wake up before the sun, I put on my new store-bought boy shoes and carefully, quietly step over all the sleeping men. The room smells like man feet and man breath. I don't see
Pappy, but I do see Smasher, who is asleep and snoring on his back with his mouth open, a line of spittle running into a puddle on the ground.
I stop when I see one man sleeping in a hood-and-mask costume. I walk around this still figure, lying sprawled out and asleep on the ground. I recognize the hood and then the hood's mask. It is the fancy hood with the extra slits above the eyes, mouth, and nose, like worry lines, that belonged to the man who lit the match that
Maybe Mr. Frank was right the first time about all of us O'Donnells. Mean just makes more mean.
Finally, Pappy tells his story of thieving Mr. Frank and it is told all night again and again, each time the laughter rising louder and louder when Pappy says low and serious, "You know, they used to call him 'Shanks.'" And that gets everybody laughing even louder and I can't do a thing about any of it.
After all the fun and carrying on, and after all the women and children leave, the men stay behind and Pappy's talk turns serious. He talks about what a terrible, sorrowful job Ulysses Grant is doing in Washington and how ex-Confederates have to work hard to get their vote back, seeing how they are now banned from voting. He says it's not right to fight and fight for your country, then come home and not be able to vote. He
says
he wishes he'd never seen the violence and slaughter he saw at the Battle of Franklin, but to hear him tell it, I'm not so sure. For five hours his commander charged his soldiers to move forward. Seventeen hundred and fifty of
them killed, 3,800 wounded, 702 missing. "My flesh trembles when I think of it. Would to God that I never witnessed such a scene."
We hear a screech owl.
In the Bloody Angle area at Spotsylvania, Pappy says he and his repelled thousands of charging Yankees at Fort Gregg, throwing rocks when ammunition gave out. Some of them even went with Robert E. Lee when he surrendered at Appomattox. They called themselves the Smith County Defenders because they weren't fighting for anythingâthey were defending.
"So tell me," Pappy says. "We come home, broken, and we're supposed to stand aside and watch those colored boys vote while we can't?"
I stay down low under my quilt, and as I listen I think,
How much of this meanness I see now started with warring? How much of all these everyday violent ways began with battlefield battles?
Mr. Smith, Pappy, and so many other men were paid and taught to kill for a cause, then they lost and they were supposed to go home peaceful, legally bound now to a new united country. Wasn't that asking too much? Who thought of these rules?
"I'm glad Grant said for Mississippi to work it out. I don't want no government handouts," Pappy says.
"The Klan don't have no use for the carpetbaggers and scallywags making the rules," somebody says. "Don't have no use for them no way."
"You hear that fellow from Maine is planning to run for governor of Mississippi? What's his name, Ames?" Pappy says.
I hear, "Jesus God Almighty."
"They look down on us; all of them do up north," Pappy says. "But I tell you what. I'd rather be somebody's enemy than someone's loser. Course, I'd rather be neither. I'd rather just be Mark O'Donnell, only better off, but how am I supposed to do that?" He stares at the fire, thinking on the circle he just talked himself into. His face is filled with furrows and canals where dirt has caked in. He still parts his hair down the middle, but that's only when he parts his hair. Tonight it's slicked back, then thrown off to both sides helter-skelter. His ears poke out uneven and his chin has a cleft that Momma always liked. The worry lines across Pappy's forehead look like all the rivers running in these parts, rivers that don't ever meet up and don't ever seem to end.
When I wake up before the sun, I put on my new store-bought boy shoes and carefully, quietly step over all the sleeping men. The room smells like man feet and man breath. I don't see
Pappy, but I do see Smasher, who is asleep and snoring on his back with his mouth open, a line of spittle running into a puddle on the ground.
I stop when I see one man sleeping in a hood-and-mask costume. I walk around this still figure, lying sprawled out and asleep on the ground. I recognize the hood and then the hood's mask. It is the fancy hood with the extra slits above the eyes, mouth, and nose, like worry lines, that belonged to the man who lit the match that
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