Collected Stories Page 4

  It was a kind of mixed hound, with a little bird dog and some collie and maybe a considerable of almost anything else, but it would ease through the woods without no more noise than a hant and pick up a squirrel’s trail on the ground and bark jest once, unless it knowed you was where you could see it, and then tiptoe that trail out jest like a man and never make another sound until it treed, and only then when it knowed you hadn’t kept in sight of it. It belonged to pap and Vernon Tull together. Will Varner give it to Tull as a puppy, and pap raised it for a half interest; me and him trained it and it slept in my bed with me until it got so big maw finally run it out of the house, and for the last six months Solon had been trying to buy it. Him and Tull had agreed on two dollars for Tull’s half of it, but Solon and pap was still six dollars apart on ourn, because pap said it was worth ten dollars of anybody’s money and if Tull wasn’t going to collect his full half of that, he was going to collect it for him.

  “So that’s it,” pap said. “Them things wasn’t work units atall. They was dog units.”

  “Jest a suggestion,” Solon said. “Jest a friendly offer to keep them runaway shingles from breaking up your private business for six hours tomorrow morning. You sell me your half of that trick overgrown fyce and I’ll finish these shingles for you.”

  “Naturally including them six extra units of one dollars,” pap said.

  “No, no,” Solon said. “I’ll pay you the same two dollars for your half of that dog that me and Tull agreed on for his half of it. You meet me here tomorrow morning with the dog and you can go on back home or wherever them urgent private affairs are located, and forget about that church roof.”

  For about ten seconds more, pap set there with the maul up over his head, looking at Solon. Then for about three seconds he wasn’t looking at Solon or at nothing else. Then he was looking at Solon again. It was jest exactly like after about two and nine-tenths seconds he found out he wasn’t looking at Solon, so he looked back at him as quick as he could. “Hah,” he said. Then he began to laugh. It was laughing all right, because his mouth was open and that’s what it sounded like. But it never went no further back than his teeth and it never come nowhere near reaching as high up as his eyes. And he never said “Look out” this time neither. He jest shifted fast on his hips and swung the maul down, the froe done already druv through the bolt and into the ground while the shingle was still whirling off to slap Solon across the shin.

  Then they went back at it again. Up to this time I could tell pap’s licks from Solon’s and Homer’s, even with my back turned, not because they was louder or steadier, because Solon and Homer worked steady, too, and the froe never made no especial noise jest going into the ground, but because they was so infrequent; you would hear five or six of Solon’s and Homer’s little polite chipping licks before you would hear pap’s froe go “chug!” and know that another shingle had went whirling off somewhere. But from now on pap’s sounded jest as light and quick and polite as Solon’s or Homer’s either, and, if anything, even a little faster, with the shingles piling up steadier than I could stack them, almost; until now there was going to be more than a plenty of them for Tull and the others to shingle with tomorrow, right on up to noon, when we heard Armstid’s farm bell, and Solon laid his froe and maul down and looked at his watch too. And I wasn’t so far away neither, but by the time I caught up with pap he had untied the mule from the sapling and was already on it. And maybe Solon and Homer thought they had pap, and maybe for a minute I did, too, but I jest wish they could have seen his face then. He reached our dinner bucket down from the limb and handed it to me.

  “Go on and eat,” he said. “Don’t wait for me. Him and his work units. If he wants to know where I went, tell him I forgot something and went home to get it. Tell him I had to go back home to get two spoons for us to eat our dinner with. No, don’t tell him that. If he hears I went somewhere to get something I needed to use, even if it’s jest a tool to eat with, he will refuse to believe I jest went home, for the reason that I don’t own anything there that even I would borrow.” He hauled the mule around and heeled him in the flank. Then he pulled up again. “And when I come back, no matter what I say, don’t pay no attention to it. No matter what happens, don’t you say nothing. Don’t open your mouth a-tall, you hear?”

  Then he went on, and I went back to where Solon and Homer was setting on the running board of Solon’s school-bus truck, eating, and sho enough Solon said jest exactly what pap said he was going to.

  “I admire his optimism, but he’s mistaken. If it’s something he needs that he can’t use his natural hands and feet for, he’s going somewhere else than jest his own house.”

  We had jest went back to the shingles when pap rid up and got down and tied the mule back to the sapling and come and taken up the ax and snicked the blade into the next cut.

  “Well, men,” he said, “I been thinking about it. I still don’t think it’s right, but I still ain’t thought of anything to do about it. But somebody’s got to make up for them two hours nobody worked this morning, and since you fellers are two to one against me, it looks like it’s going to be me that makes them up. But I got work waiting at home for me tomorrow. I got corn that’s crying out loud for me right now. Or maybe that’s jest a lie too. Maybe the whole thing is, I don’t mind admitting here in private that I been outfigured, but I be dog if I’m going to set here by myself tomorrow morning admitting it in public. Anyway, I ain’t. So I’m going to trade with you, Solon. You can have the dog.”

  Solon looked at pap. “I don’t know as I want to trade now,” he said.

  “I see,” pap said. The ax was still stuck in the cut. He began to pump it up and down to back it out.

  “Wait,” Solon said. “Put that durn ax down.” But pap held the ax raised for the lick, looking at Solon and waiting. “You’re swapping me half a dog for a half a day’s work,” Solon said.

  “Your half of the dog for that half a day’s work you still owe on these shingles.”

  “And the two dollars,” pap said. “That you and Tull agreed on. I sell you half the dog for two dollars, and you come back here tomorrow and finish the shingles. You give me the two dollars now, and I’ll meet you here in the morning with the dog, and you can show me the receipt from Tull for his half then.”

  “Me and Tull have already agreed,” Solon said.

  “All right,” pap said. “Then you can pay Tull his two dollars and bring his receipt with you without no trouble.”

  “Tull will be at the church tomorrow morning, pulling off them old shingles,” Solon said.

  “All right,” pap said. “Then it won’t be no trouble at all for you to get a receipt from him. You can stop at the church when you pass. Tull ain’t named Grier. He won’t need to be off somewhere borrowing a crowbar.”

  So Solon taken out his purse and paid pap the two dollars and they went back to work. And now it looked like they really was trying to finish that afternoon, not jest Solon, but even Homer, that didn’t seem to be concerned in it nohow, and pap, that had already swapped a half a dog to get rid of whatever work Solon claimed would be left over. I quit trying to stay up with them; I jest stacked shingles.

  Then Solon laid his froe and maul down. “Well, men,” he said, “I don’t know what you fellers think, but I consider this a day.”

  “All right,” pap said. “You are the one to decide when to quit, since whatever elbow units you consider are going to be shy tomorrow will be yourn.”

  “That’s a fact,” Solon said. “And since I am giving a day and a half to the church instead of jest a day, like I started out doing, I reckon I better get on home and tend to a little of my own work.” He picked up his froe and maul and ax and went to his truck and stood waiting for Homer to come and get in.

  “I’ll be here in the morning with the dog,” pap said.

  “Sholy,” Solon said. It sounded like he had forgot about the dog, or that it wasn’t no longer any importance. But he stood there again and looked
hard and quiet at pap for about a second. “And a bill of sale from Tull for his half of it. As you say, it won’t be no trouble a-tall to get that from him.” Him and Homer got into the truck and he started the engine. You couldn’t say jest what it was. It was almost like Solon was hurrying himself, so pap wouldn’t have to make any excuse or pretense toward doing or not doing anything. “I have always understood the fact that lightning don’t have to hit twice is one of the reasons why they named it lightning. So getting lightning-struck is a mistake that might happen to any man. The mistake I seem to made is, I never realized in time that what I was looking at was a cloud. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “With the dog,” pap said.

  “Certainly,” Solon said, again like it had slipped his mind completely. “With the dog.”

  Then him and Homer drove off. Then pap got up.

  “What?” I said. “What? You swapped him your half of Tull’s dog for that half a day’s work tomorrow. Now what?”

  “Yes,” pap said. “Only before that I had already swapped Tull a half a day’s work pulling off them old shingles tomorrow, for Tull’s half of that dog. Only we ain’t going to wait until tomorrow. We’re going to pull them shingles off tonight, and without no more racket about it than is necessary. I don’t aim to have nothing on my mind tomorrow but watching Mr. Solon Work-Unit Quick trying to get a bill of sale for two dollars or ten dollars either on the other half of that dog. And we’ll do it tonight. I don’t want him jest to find out at sunup tomorrow that he is too late. I want him to find out then that even when he laid down to sleep he was already too late.”

  So we went back home and I fed and milked while pap went down to Killegrews’ to carry the froe and maul back and to borrow a crowbar. But of all places in the world and doing what under the sun with it, Old Man Killegrew had went and lost his crowbar out of a boat into forty feet of water. And pap said how he come within a inch of going to Solon’s and borrowing his crowbar out of pure poetic justice, only Solon might have smelled the rat jest from the idea of the crowbar. So pap went to Armstid’s and borrowed hisn and come back and we et supper and cleaned and filled the lantern while maw still tried to find out what we was up to that couldn’t wait till morning.

  We left her still talking, even as far as the front gate, and come on back to the church, walking this time, with the rope and crowbar and a hammer for me, and the lantern still dark. Whitfield and Snopes was unloading a ladder from Snopes’ wagon when we passed the church on the way home before dark, so all we had to do was to set the ladder up against the church. Then pap clumb up onto the roof with the lantern and pulled off shingles until he could hang the lantern inside behind the decking, where it could shine out through the cracks in the planks, but you couldn’t see it unless you was passing in the road, and by that time anybody would ’a’ already heard us. Then I clumb up with the rope, and pap reached it through the decking and around a rafter and back and tied the ends around our waists, and we started. And we went at it. We had them old shingles jest raining down, me using the claw hammer and pap using the crowbar, working the bar under a whole patch of shingles at one time and then laying back on the bar like in one more lick or if the crowbar ever happened for one second to get a solid holt, he would tilt up that whole roof at one time like a hinged box lid.

  That’s exactly what he finally done. He laid back on the bar and this time it got a holt. It wasn’t jest a patch of shingles, it was a whole section of decking, so that when he lunged back he snatched that whole section of roof from around the lantern like you would shuck a corn nubbin. The lantern was hanging on a nail. He never even moved the nail, he jest pulled the board off of it, so that it looked like for a whole minute I watched the lantern, and the crowbar, too, setting there in the empty air in a little mess of floating shingles, with the empty nail still sticking through the bail of the lantern, before the whole thing started down into the church. It hit the floor and bounced once. Then it hit the floor again, and this time the whole church jest blowed up into a pit of yellow jumping fire, with me and pap hanging over the edge of it on two ropes.

  I don’t know what become of the rope nor how we got out of it. I don’t remember climbing down. Jest pap yelling behind me and pushing me about halfway down the ladder and then throwing me the rest of the way by a handful of my overhalls, and then we was both on the ground, running for the water barrel. It set under the gutter spout at the side, and Armstid was there then; he had happened to go out to his lot about a hour back and seen the lantern on the church roof, and it stayed on his mind until finally he come up to see what was going on, and got there jest in time to stand yelling back and forth with pap across the water barrel. And I believe we still would have put it out. Pap turned and squatted against the barrel and got a holt of it over his shoulder and stood up with that barrel that was almost full and run around the corner and up the steps of the church and hooked his toe on the top step and come down with the barrel busting on top of him and knocking him cold out as a wedge.

  So we had to drag him back first, and maw was there then, and Mrs. Armstid about the same time, and me and Armstid run with the two fire buckets to the spring, and when we got back there was a plenty there, Whitfield, too, with more buckets, and we done what we could, but the spring was two hundred yards away and ten buckets emptied it and it taken five minutes to fill again, and so finally we all jest stood around where pap had come to again with a big cut on his head and watched it go. It was a old church, long dried out, and full of old colored-picture charts that Whitfield had accumulated for more than fifty years, that the lantern had lit right in the middle of when it finally exploded. There was a special nail where he would keep a old long nightshirt he would wear to baptize in. I would use to watch it all the time during church and Sunday school, and me and the other boys would go past the church sometimes jest to peep in at it, because to a boy of ten it wasn’t jest a cloth garment or even a iron armor; it was the old strong Archangel Michael his self, that had fit and strove and conquered sin for so long that it finally had the same contempt for the human beings that returned always to sin as hogs and dogs done that the old strong archangel his self must have had.

  For a long time it never burned, even after everything else inside had. We could watch it, hanging there among the fire, not like it had knowed in its time too much water to burn easy, but like it had strove and fit with the devil and all the hosts of hell too long to burn in jest a fire that Res Grier started, trying to beat Solon Quick out of half a dog. But at last it went, too, not in a hurry still, but jest all at once, kind of roaring right on up and out against the stars and the far dark spaces. And then there wasn’t nothing but jest pap, drenched and groggy-looking, on the ground, with the rest of us around him, and Whitfield like always in his boiled shirt and his black hat and pants, standing there with his hat on, too, like he had strove too long to save what hadn’t ought to been created in the first place, from the damnation it didn’t even want to escape, to bother to need to take his hat off in any presence. He looked around at us from under it; we was all there now, all that belonged to that church and used it to be born and marry and die from—us and the Armstids and Tulls, and Bookwright and Quick and Snopes.

  “I was wrong,” Whitfield said. “I told you we would meet here tomorrow to roof a church. We’ll meet here in the morning to raise one.”

  “Of course we got to have a church,” pap said. “We’re going to have one. And we’re going to have it soon. But there’s some of us done already give a day or so this week, at the cost of our own work. Which is right and just, and we’re going to give more, and glad to. But I don’t believe that the Lord——”

  Whitfield let him finish. He never moved. He jest stood there until pap finally run down of his own accord and hushed and set there on the ground mostly not looking at maw, before Whitfield opened his mouth.

  “Not you,” Whitfield said. “Arsonist.”

  “Arsonist?” pap said.

  “Yes,
” Whitfield said. “If there is any pursuit in which you can engage without carrying flood and fire and destruction and death behind you, do it. But not one hand shall you lay to this new house until you have proved to us that you are to be trusted again with the powers and capacities of a man.” He looked about at us again. “Tull and Snopes and Armstid have already promised for tomorrow. I understand that Quick had another half day he intended——”

  “I can give another day,” Solon said.

  “I can give the rest of the week,” Homer said.

  “I ain’t rushed neither,” Snopes said.

  “That will be enough to start with, then,” Whitfield said. “It’s late now. Let us all go home.”

  He went first. He didn’t look back once, at the church or at us. He went to the old mare and clumb up slow and stiff and powerful, and was gone, and we went too, scattering. But I looked back at it. It was jest a shell now, with a red and fading core, and I had hated it at times and feared it at others, and I should have been glad. But there was something that even that fire hadn’t even touched. Maybe that’s all it was—jest indestructibility, endurability—that old man that could plan to build it back while its walls was still fire-fierce and then calmly turn his back and go away because he knowed that the men that never had nothing to give toward the new one but their work would be there at sunup tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, too, as long as it was needed, to give that work to build it back again. So it hadn’t gone a-tall; it didn’t no more care for that little fire and flood than Whitfield’s old baptizing gown had done. Then we was home. Maw had left so fast the lamp was still lit, and we could see pap now, still leaving a puddle where he stood, with a cut across the back of his head where the barrel had busted and the blood-streaked water soaking him to the waist.