Wiley Cash - A Land More Kind Than Home

I looked over at the rattler’s body where it lay on the ground by Stump’s leg, and I walked over to it and stared down at the little rattle on the end of its tail. I bent down and touched it, and then I picked it up and stood up straight. I shook it and listened to the sound it made.

“Look here, Stump,” I said. He turned around and watched me hold the snake. I rattled its tail. “Listen to it,” I said. “This would be the last thing you’d hear if one of these boys snuck up on you.” I made a hissing sound and rattled the snake’s tail again. I laughed and walked toward the hole to drop it in down inside with the head, but just when I reached out my arm and got ready to let it go, the bloody stump where the head used to be reared back and struck me on the inside of my arm. It made a soft, squishy noise when the snake’s guts smacked up against my skin, and for a minute I thought the blood it had left behind was mine. I screamed and dropped the snake into the hole and fell back onto my butt and covered up the inside of my arm with my hand. I looked up and saw Stump standing over the hole and staring down into it. “Leave it alone,” I said. “Don’t touch it.”

I stood up and wiped the snake’s blood off my arm and onto the back of my blue jeans. Then I walked over to the hole and stood beside Stump and looked down inside. The snake’s body was crawling around down inside there, and I could just barely hear that rattle going on the end of its tail. It looked like the head had come alive too, and its mouth was opening and closing and its tongue was sticking out. We stood there and watched it for a minute, but then I started wondering if there was any way it could climb up out of there, and I picked up the shovel and started covering the hole over with dirt.

ONCE I HAD THE SNAKE BURIED, ME AND STUMP WALKED DOWN TO the creek. I kneeled down in the soft mud and washed the snake’s blood off the inside of my arm. Stump walked a little piece down the bank and squatted down and started turning over rocks and looking for salamanders. I could hear his hands splashing around in the water and cleaning the dirt off them. I looked down at my own hands, and then I looked up at Stump where I could just barely see his back through all the ferns that grew along the water.

“Do you think we should’ve said a prayer or something?” I hollered at him. I waited for a second, and then I heard a splash and I knew he’d done turned over another rock. “I don’t think we should’ve either,” I said to myself.

I wiped my wet hands off on my jeans, and then I stood and walked through the ferns to where Stump had squatted down by the creek. I sat down on my butt beside him. He had both his hands in the water, and he was digging into the mud and pulling it up by the fistful and looking at it up close to see if it had anything in it. You could find you some awfully good rocks doing it like that. I knew his pockets would be full of them if he found any.

“Mama thinks you talked in church today,” I said. Stump rocked backward onto his behind too and crossed his legs and sat Indian-style. He wiped the water off his hands and onto his knees, and then he looked up into the trees like there was something up there he expected to see. “Hey,” I said, trying to get him to look at me. “Hey,” I said again. I reached out and touched his arm, and he looked at me for just a second, and then he raised his head back toward the trees. “It was me,” I said. “It was me she heard. Me and Joe Bill were outside, and we saw what they did. I was too scared to say anything because I knew how mad Mama would be at me for watching when I wasn’t supposed to.” He turned his head and looked up the hill back toward the barn. “I’m sorry,” I told him. “I should’ve said something to Mama on the way home, and I should’ve tried to stop them from doing what they did. I shouldn’t have let it happen.”

Stump looked at me like he just might’ve been listening to what I was telling him, and then he stood up and walked away from the creek and up toward the hill. I didn’t watch him as he went, but I could hear the ferns swishing against his legs when he walked through them. I sat there alone for a little bit, and I thought about how it was this time, two days before, that me and Stump had been coming up the hill from the creek when we stopped underneath Mama and Daddy’s open window. I pictured Stump climbing up on top of the rain barrel to see in, and I remembered the feeling I had when I saw Pastor Chambliss come around the corner of the house and reach down and touch Stump. I still felt his fingers on my hand where he’d held it tight to get a good look at where that splinter had gone right in. I imagined Chambliss laying his hand on Stump, and then I imagined the weight of all those men pushing down on top of him. I knew that me and Stump had both seen things we would have been better off knowing nothing about.

I HEARD MAMA HOLLERING FOR US TO COME IN AND I KNEW THAT meant she had our lunch ready. The ferns were all mashed down from where Stump had walked through them, and I followed the trail he made up to where I’d buried the rattler. The dirt was still soft, and I walked around on top of it to get it good and packed down, and then I picked up the shovel and set off up the hill to the barn.

I leaned the shovel against the wall behind the barn door, and I looked up at the rafters where I knew my daddy was going to be hanging the tobacco once he’d finished sticking it and bringing it all in. When I left the barn and stepped out into the sunlight, I saw Stump up beside the house. He was on his knees in front of the rain barrel turning the spigot back and forth. There wasn’t no water coming out because there wasn’t any in there.

“Nothing’s going to come out,” I told him. “It’s still broke, and if I was you I wouldn’t be messing with it because sooner or later Daddy’s going to find out.” We were standing under their window again. It was open, and I could hear them talking all the way from the kitchen. It sounded like they were arguing about something. I looked up at the gutter spout where it was supposed to run down inside the barrel, but it was all bent up and torn loose. “You’d better use the hose,” I said. He gave the spigot another couple of turns, and I walked over to the hose pipe and turned it on. I washed off my hands one at a time, and I left it running and sat it down in the grass. “Here,” I said. “Here, use this.” Stump shimmied over on his knees and picked up the hose and took a sip of the water, and then he rinsed his hands. I went around to the back of the house and opened the back door and walked down the hallway to the kitchen.

“Well, he’s the one that called me,” I heard Daddy say. “It ain’t like I called him, Julie. He’s been back for a while, and I didn’t even know about it.”

“Why’d he even come back? It sounds like he ain’t but a couple of miles away, so it’s not like he’s been dying to see you. It ain’t like he’s made any effort at all to meet your family.”

“Maybe that’s what he’s doing now,” Daddy said.

“Yeah, right,” Mama said. “He probably needs money.”

“He did mention that he’s thinking about selling the old place,” Daddy said.

“What a surprise,” Mama said. “Well, if he asks you for any money, then you’d better tell him to get in line behind me.” I heard her sigh.

“Who are y’all talking about?” I asked. Daddy stood with his hands on the back of one of the chairs and leaned out over the table and stared down at it where Mama had already started setting out the food. He looked at me, and then he looked at Mama where she was rinsing off a head of cabbage in the sink. He smiled at her just a little bit like he was in trouble for something that he wasn’t going to take very seriously. Mama just looked away from him and picked up a big knife and sat that head of cabbage down on the counter and started chopping away at it.