Chaneysville Incident by David Bradley Read Free Book Online Page B

used for planters. The woodpile was depleted and the logs that remained were washed-out looking, the sharp browns of bark and pulp bleached an unholy gray. Down the slope the outhouse sagged, and the vines that covered it were brown and limp. The scene depressed me—it spoke of decay. Of death. I wondered how much of that had to do with the fact that the man who for years had made it all go, who had added life and force and interest to it, was not moving through it, might not be moving at all. There was no sign of him, not even smoke from the chimney. And so I hurried, breaking into a run as soon as I reached level ground, pounding towards the door. I slowed as I reached it, pausing for a moment to get my breath back, taking time to get a smile on my face. I knocked. And then I waited.
    He had left me standing in the open doorway while he went to light the lamp, and waited there while I looked around, letting me take my time. After a few minutes he came toward me and placed his hand on my shoulder. “You pack a pretty good wallop for a youngster,” he said.
    It took me a while to figure out that he was talking about my hitting him, but once I had I felt a flush of a curiously mixed emotion: embarrassment at the praise, fear at the thought of reprisal, pride at my sudden capacity for violence. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I hope I didn’t hurt you.”
    “Hurt,” he roared. “Hell, you damn near kilt me. But you ain’t got no need to be sorry. If you hadda kilt me it woulda served me right—I didn’t have no business comin’ up there like that, stickin’ ma face up in yours. It was the wrong way to go about things. I always was like that, get the idea ’bout what oughta be done, an’ then haul off an’ do it jest backwards. Your daddy now, he always thought things out, knowed what he wanted to do an’ what was the right way to go about it. He—” He stopped, looked at me. “Damn, I guess I’m doin’ it again. I hadn’t oughta be speakin’ a your daddy now.”
    “I don’t mind,” I said.
    He must have heard indifference, or something, in my voice. “You don’t care if he’s gone, do you?”
    I didn’t say anything.
    “It ain’t nothin’ to be ashamed of,” he said. “Can’t nobody make you feel somethin’ you don’t feel, an’ there ain’t no point in tryin’ to pretend you feel it. Hell, I bet you didn’t even like him.”
    I didn’t say anything.
    “Me,” he said, “I guess you could say I loved him. He saved my life moren one time. But I’ll tell you the truth—way Moses went about things, he was like to save your butt by kickin’ you in it to get you movin’ in the right direction. You mighta loved him for it later on, but right off you wasn’t likely to be too damn grateful.”
    He had been hypnotizing me. He must have been, for somehow I found that I had left the door and was standing in the middle of the cabin, near an odd slate-topped table, and the door was shut behind me. I looked around for some other way out; there wasn’t any. I started to edge back towards the door.
    “Don’t jest stand there, boy,” he snapped. “Siddown.”
    I had to decide then whether to break for the door or not. There was no question about what I wanted to do, but my mother had told me to obey the commands of adults without question; besides, I was curious. So I moved forward towards a handmade hickory chair that butted up against the table. I pulled it out and got up on it, to sit with my legs dangling.
    Meanwhile Old Jack had been busy, stirring up the stove, setting a kettle over an open hole. “You drink, boy?”
    “Sure,” I said. “Everybody drinks.”
    “Damn, son,” he said. “I don’t mean buttermilk an’ root beer, I mean do you drink whiskey?”
    “Oh, no,” I said.
    He peered at me. “Why the hell don’t you?”
    “Why, because it’s bad.”
    “What’s so bad about it?”
    “Well…it’s bad for you, that’s all. It makes you do bad things. And it makes