Chinaberry by James Still Read Free Book Online Page B

to tuck me in, and before takingthe light away, he raised me for a moment to learn, he said, if I'd gained any weight since yesterday. Lurie floated in behind him, and standing with me in his arms, he drew her to us, giving me a light kiss on the chin and Lurie a fuller one on the cheek. He lowered me onto the trundle bed and said what I was to hear night after night: “Sleep good so you'll be happy in the morning. Sleepy sleep.”
    It seems that I cried out in the night, which I might well have done, or made disturbing sounds, for he had come with the lamp to assure me with his presence.
    A routine evolved. Lurie and I were both as fresh as soap and water and clean garments could make us as we awaited Anson's return. During August, he came before sunset. As the shipping season arrived, he came later, and by October, he didn't get home until after dark.
    Instead of driving to the common parking ground, he would stop in the yard, leave the motor running, jump out, and rush up the steps and embrace Lurie. Next, he would pick me up, give me a smack on the chin, then close us both in his arms, and make a groan of relief. Unused to being picked up, I felt both awkward and embarrassed, even though no fellow Alabamians were there to watch. Every time I said “I'm heavy,” he would reply, “As chicken feathers.” Still carrying me, he took me back to the car, and once having parked, he asked, “How was the day?” Whatever the hour, we did not have supper until he was with us.
    That same second night at Chinaberry, the tick hunt was initiated, an event that would happen every night after that. In Alabama it was the red bug that was likely to burrow into the skin and fester, particularly in spots unreachable to scratch. Turpentine and kerosene and vinegar were the recommended remedies to unseat the almost-invisible insect. Usually, you scratched itfree. But in Texas the tick was the problem. If allowed to hang on long enough, the tick would bloat itself with your blood and likely infect you with Rocky Mountain fever. Looking for ticks was a job for more eyes than your own. You had to be scanned top to bottom, front and back. Every day.
    Here was a problem. By age twelve, boys have been imbued with the inviolability of their bodies and will not undress before anyone except their peers. Anson and Lurie worked together on this daily search, usually before bedtime. With all my clothes removed save my shorts, Lurie turned me about, looking me over carefully. She left the room, and Anson would pull my shorts down for a moment, look front and back, and jerk them up again. He'd call to Lurie, “The road's clear.”
    His son, having lived to only be six, did not have to pass through the insecurities of adolescence.
    No matter my embarrassments, I knew that I had been taken in. Chinaberry was to be my home.
    A morning came when Anson stood by my chair at the table as I devoured cornflakes and remarked, “I had a little boy once, and he used to give me a big smack every time I was going to leave him, even for a minute.”
    He meant a kiss. I had never kissed anybody in my life, at least not that I could remember. I looked at Lurie and her eyes said “Do it.”
    Anson bent down, and my mouth pressed high on his jaw. No “smack” to it.
    â€œHuh,” Anson said. “Pretty dry.” Then, “Have you got a smack for Lurie?”
    I did, and willingly. Hard, on the cheek. “Good boy,” said Anson.
    It was a revelation.

    On the third night at Chinaberry, my bed was rolled into their bedroom, directly across from their brass bed, which in lamplight shone like gold.
    Anson did not report to the ranch for the next two days. The telephone rang, some explanation was given, and on the third day, his brother Bronson arrived in a cattle truck, bringing Ernest with him, to check on us. Bronson and Anson looked so much alike that I fancied them father and son. The same sandy hair,