Mozart and Leadbelly Read online

  “You don’t like to carry fishes,” my old man said, without looking around.

  I knew my old man was mad because I had gone to sleep and not caught anything. I wanted to say I was sorry, but my old man didn’t like for me to say I was sorry about anything. So I dropped back and walked along with Benny.

  “Here,” my old man said. “Take it.”

  I ran up beside him and took the trout, then I dropped back and walked alongside Benny. Benny didn’t like the way I was grinning and feeling proud.

  My old man and Mr. James walked in front of me and Benny when we were going back home, and nobody was doing much talking. When we got to Mrs. Diana Brown’s place, the sun was still about two hours up in the sky.

  “We might as well stop in and have a drink of water,” my old man said. “I’m a bit thirsty. Aren’t you, George?”

  “I can stand a drink,” Mr. James said.

  “Me and Max’ll stay out here,” Benny said. “I’m not thirsty.”

  “Come on in,” Mr. James said.

  “I’m not thirsty,” Benny said.

  “Come on in, anyhow,” Mr. James said. “Might as well be sociable.”

  We leaned our fishing poles against the picket fence and went into the yard. Benny walked in back of us.

  Mrs. Diana Brown was a widow who lived back in the fields with her grown-up niece, Amy. There wasn’t another house within two miles of Mrs. Diana Brown’s place, and none of the other women folks associated too much with her or Amy. They said that no woman with a grown-up niece like that was worth anything, if neither one of them was married. But that never bothered Mrs. Diana Brown.

  She came out to the store every Saturday and made grocery and came back to her place without saying anything to anybody. Mrs. Diana Brown walked more prouder than any other lady that I had ever seen.

  Amy was sitting on the porch when we went into the yard.

  “Diana home, Amy?” my old man asked.

  “She went to town,” Amy said.

  My old man looked at Amy.

  “Well, we just want a drink of water,” my old man said.

  Amy smiled.

  “Well’s in the back,” she said. “Help yourself.”

  My old man and Mr. James went around the house, and Benny and I stood out in the yard next to the porch. Amy looked at us, then she went inside the house. My old man and Mr. James came from in back of the house and sat on the end of the porch.

  “It’s been hot today,” my old man said.

  “Yes,” Mr. James said.

  Then they didn’t say anything else and my old man took out his pocket handkerchief and wiped his face and neck. They didn’t look like they were going to be moving soon, so I leaned against the steps to rest a while. Benny moved over to the big mulberry tree that Mrs. Diana Brown had in her front yard.

  “Max,” my old man said, “I want you to go into the house, and go into the first room on your right. Just push the door open and go in there.”

  “What for?” I asked.

  “Because I said so,” my old man said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  I went up on the porch and into the house. I pushed the door open like my old man had told me to do, and I saw Amy lying in the bed under the spread. She was covered up all the way up to her neck.

  “Hi, Max,” she said.

  I looked at Amy but I didn’t say anything. The window right in back of the bed was opened, but the two curtains were very still. It had been a hot day and no wind was blowing. I looked at Amy grinning at me, then I backed out of the room and went back on the porch.

  “Pa—” I started to say.

  My old man jumped like something unexpectedly had hit him.

  “What are you doing out here, Max?” he said.

  “Amy is in there.”

  “I know she’s in there,” my old man said.

  “She’s in the bed,” I said.

  “I knew that, too,” my old man said. “Go back in there like I told you.”

  I went back to the door, and thought maybe my old man had made a mistake about the room. I went back out on the porch.

  “Pa, is that the right room?” I said.

  My old man looked at me like he knew I was going to come back out there.

  “Max,” he said, looking at me, “if you come back out here one more time without going into that room and staying in there awhile, I’m going to take my belt off to you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I went back to the room where Amy was and stood just inside of the door.

  “Max is afraid of girls,” Amy sang. “You’re afraid of me, Max?”

  “I’m not afraid of anybody,” I said.

  “Then come here,” Amy said.

  “I rather stand here where I’m at,” I said.

  “Your pa want you to come where I’m at,” she said, grinning.

  I looked at Amy, and I wanted to leave the room again, but I thought about my old man. Not that he would whip me, I knew he had been bluffing out on the porch. He had never whipped me, and I doubted if he ever would. But that wasn’t what I thought about. I thought about our friendship and our partnership. I had been his partner since Mom had died, and that had been a long time. And nothing had broken it up because I had always obeyed him. And I knew as long as I obeyed him the partnership would last. When I didn’t, it would end. I wasn’t ready for that to happen. So I went where she was like he wanted me to do.

  When I went back on the porch, my old man was sitting with his back against the post. He had one leg drawn up on the porch. He gave me a glance as I passed by him, going to the end of the porch to sit down, but he didn’t tell me anything. I looked at Benny sitting down on the ground against the tree. He had a little stick in his hand and he was poking in the ground. Mr. James was sitting next to my old man, looking down at his feet.

  “Benny,” Mr. James said.

  And just like that, Benny started crying.

  “Cut that out,” Mr. James said. “Look at that. Look at that boy.”

  My old man looked at Benny but didn’t say anything.

  “Fifteen years old,” Mr. James said. “And look at him.”

  Benny cried and poked in the ground with the little stick.

  “Look at Max,” Mr. James said. “Isn’t he still breathing? Isn’t he still alive? Did she eat him up?”

  The tears and snot began to run out of Benny’s eyes and nose. He kept jabbing the little stick down in the ground. He didn’t bother to wipe his face.

  “When you get tired crying, just get up from there and go inside the house,” Mr. James said. “I’ve got all night.” My old man was looking at Benny, and I knew my old man felt like walking over there and butting Benny’s head against the tree two or three times. Benny was about a year older than I was and I knew if he was my old man’s son, my old man would have butt his head against that tree and then picked him up and threw him in the room where Amy was. But Benny was not my old man’s son, and Mr. James was not like my old man, and so Benny just sat against the tree and cried and jabbed in the ground with the little stick.

  I stood up to go around the house to get some water from the well.

  “Where’re you going, Max?” my old man asked.

  “Just to get some water,” I said.

  I went around the house and drew some water from the well and drank. When I came back to the porch, Benny was still sitting against the tree. He had stopped crying.

  “You’re ready to go in there, now?” Mr. James asked.

  Benny started crying again. He still had the little stick in his hand.

  My old man looked at Benny, then he looked at me.

  “Well, we might as well move along,” he said, picking up the string of fishes. “You’re taking off now, George?”

  “Might as well,” Mr. James said, and stood up.

  Mr. James looked at Benny sitting against the tree with his head down, then picked up his string of fishes. He and my old man started out of the yard. I
went to the tree where Benny was.

  “You’re going, now, Benny?” I asked him.

  Benny didn’t look up. I stood there about a minute looking down at him, and he didn’t look up once.

  “Well, I’d better be going,” I said. “I’ll have to clean the fishes for supper.”

  I caught up with my old man and Mr. James and we walked down the road without saying anything.

  When we had gone about a half of a mile, Mr. James looked over his shoulder and saw Benny following us.

  “Damn it,” Mr. James said. “This is one day that boy is going to do what I say.”

  Mr. James turned around and started up the road toward Benny. Benny saw him coming and stopped.

  Mr. James walked up to Benny and grabbed him by the arm and turned him around. We were too far to hear if Benny was crying or not, but within myself I knew he was crying.

  My old man and I started walking again.

  “I guess you think you’re a man, now?” my old man said.

  “Sir?”

  “You heard me,” my old man said.

  “No, sir,” I said. “I don’t think I’m a man.”

  “Well, you are,” my old man said.

  I didn’t say anything, and my old man didn’t say any more. The sun was going down, and the cool dust felt good under my bare feet.

  BOY IN THE DOUBLE-BREASTED SUIT

  Before I could see what had made the noise I saw my old man still holding on to the piece of chicken, and again “pow,” and my old man dropped the piece of chicken on the platter, still shocked, and the preacher lowered his head a little more because all the time it was lowered a little, and commenced blessing the food, saying, “Gracious Master, we thank thee for this food which is prepared for us, the nurses of our bodies, for Christ sake, we pray, amen.” Then he raised his head and looked at my old man, and got himself a piece of chicken off the platter, and passed the platter around to Mrs. Adele, right in front of my face, but Mrs. Adele passed it over to my old man, and he took off a piece, then he passed it back to her and she let me take off a piece by myself, and smiled her very wonderful way of smiling at me, then she took off a piece and we began to eat, trying not to look at my old man because he was still red where the preacher had hit him twice on the hand when he had reached for a piece of chicken without first saying his blessing.

  “I suppose that hurt you,” the preacher said, putting a spoonful of potato salad in his mouth and looking at my old man at the same time.

  My old man didn’t answer the preacher, but I knew he was mad, because nobody ever hit him and got away with it. Sitting there, I wondered if that preacher knew how lucky he was, being a preacher and not just an ordinary man.

  “Now suppose the Good Lord struck you,” the preacher said. “You know how much more it would hurt.”

  But my old man still didn’t say anything and he didn’t eat, and didn’t move either for that much. But the preacher kept on talking, and putting chicken in his mouth, and tearing it away from the bone, and chewing; then putting the bone half covered with chicken back in his mouth, and pulling the bone out of his mouth, very clean and white like it had been washed in a stream, clean of everything.

  The preacher was a tall man, and wore a black suit with a long black coat and always had a wide-rim black hat, and carried a gold chain over his chest, hooked into a buttonhole and the other end in his vest pocket, hooked onto a big watch that you could hear ticking if you sat ten feet away from him. He had very big wrinkled hands, and you could see the big veins on back of his hands and up his arms. He had eyes that set far back in his face, close-together eyes, gray eyes, and his teeth that looked almost like horse teeth were very strong, and it was said around Wakeville that he could pick up a fifty-pound sack of rice with his teeth and swing it like a pendulum for a minute every weekday, and go to church on Sunday and preach two full hours without stopping as long as the sisters of the church kept wiping his face with the towel and supplying him with ice water.

  The preacher—his name was Reverend Johnson—had a little grayish-color-looking church about a mile from where Mrs. Adele lived, and Mrs. Adele and I used to go there every Sunday to Sunday school and church.

  This relationship between Mrs. Adele and me came about something like this. Mom died when I was no more than seven, and about a year later my old man began to feel lonely for a lady, and he also wanted someone to kind of look after me. So he met Mrs. Adele, who was a widow, and Mrs. Adele liked him very much because he was big and strong and could cut lots of wood and make grocery for her and do all the other little chores around a house that ladies oughtn’t have to do. And she liked me, too, because I looked so much like Oscar—that’s my old man—as she put it, and she told me she would teach me how to keep my shirt inside my pants and keep my face clean and if I was a good little boy she would buy me a double-breasted suit with long pant legs, and I could stay with her sometimes.

  So she and my old man started getting along pretty good, and my old man would take me over there on Saturday afternoon for me to stay with her all night Saturday and then he would come and get me on Sunday evening late, after church, and take me back home until the next Saturday. Mrs. Adele and I were getting along all right, too, and about two Saturdays later when I got there she showed me a long box and told me to look inside of it, and when I saw the double-breasted blue suit I ran to her and threw my arms around her and kissed her, and she smiled and hugged me and told me to go put it on.

  I did, and she and my old man liked it because it was a perfect fit, and she told me to go walk around in the road in it to show it off, and I did and when I came back I saw her and my old man lying across the bed playing with each other, and I was so happy I started crying. My old man got mad and wanted to whip me because he thought I had sneaked in on them, but Mrs. Adele wouldn’t let him whip me, and she told me that she and my old man were going to be married one day and she was going to be my stepmother, and I felt so good that I ran over to her and cried some more. But my old man didn’t like to see me crying, and he told me to take off my double-breasted suit, and put on my old clothes and go out into the yard or somewhere in the road and play with the other children.

  Though their wedding day didn’t come off as soon as I thought it ought to, that didn’t stop me from going over there every Saturday and going to Sunday school and church with Mrs. Adele every Sunday. We would walk side by side in the middle of the road, because the sidewalk was too grassy, and every once in a while she would look at me and smile and I would look at her and grin, and she would lay her hand on my shoulder and I would feel so good. And at the church all the people would meet her and talk to her and say what a nice-looking young man I was in my double-breasted blue suit, and she would feel so proud of me, and then we would go inside and sit down and listen to the preacher preach and beat on the big Bible with both fists, and I would ask her why he was beating on the Bible and hollering and she would nod her head and tell me I oughtn’t talk in church but pay attention and listen so I could be a good boy. So I would sit there and try to listen and try to make out what he was saying, but all the time not being able to because he was making too much noise, and soon I would find myself yawning out loud.

  Then after church Mrs. Adele would talk with the preacher awhile, and they would wander on my old man’s name and saying what a nice young man I was, and wouldn’t it be great if all three of us could come to church together; and then she would talk with some other people who kept a little girl with them, and all the time she would be feeling so proud of me, and they would be so proud of her for bringing me to church and soon getting married herself, and while they would be up there talking I would be trying to figure out a way to get that little old funny-looking girl around the church somewhere so I could yank her hair or do her something, but she would never follow me, being smart, and just stand there with her little old freckled face, her legs crossed, and looking at me. Then Mrs. Adele and I would walk home to her house and wait for my old
man, and then we would all eat supper together, and then my old man and I would start out for home across the fields, and not get there till way up in the night.

  “The Lord is good,” the preacher said. “If He was only like man.”

  “Amen,” Mrs. Adele said.

  I looked at Mrs. Adele because I had never heard her say amen in the house before and something kind of slipped out of my mouth—I don’t know what—and my old man looked at me and said, “What’s that you said, Max? Now don’t you start.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “You should be proud of him,” the preacher said. “But ashamed of yourself.”

  “I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, preacher,” my old man said, and for the first time he took a bite off the piece of chicken.

  “What?” the preacher said. “You mean to sit there and say you’re not ashamed of your sins?”

  My old man ate and didn’t say anything else to the preacher.

  “I’m talking to you, Oscar Wheeler,” the preacher said, rolling his eyes at my old man.

  My old man kept on eating.

  The preacher stuck his tongue down in the corner of his mouth, between his back teeth and his jaw, and dugged out a piece of chicken that he hadn’t swallowed, and chewed on it and all the time looking straight at my old man.

  “Well, if you’ve got nothing to be sorry about, I’m sorry for you,” the preacher said. And when my old man didn’t say anything, the preacher struck his big fist on the table and made a loud noise.

  My old man looked at the preacher, yet didn’t say anything. But if you knew my old man like I did, you could tell by his eyes that he wanted to say, “Don’t knock on that table like that. You can talk to me without beating on the table, can’t you? I ain’t deaf, and I’m right here.” But he didn’t say this and he and the preacher just looked into each other’s eyes until my old man finally bit off the chicken again.

  “I suppose you put him up to this,” my old man said, looking at Mrs. Adele.

  Mrs. Adele looked down at the table. I felt sorry for her.

  “Well, neither one of you’ll have to worry about my sins after today,” he said.