Wiley Cash - A Land More Kind Than Home

I got up on my knees on the bed beside him, and I pulled back the curtains behind the bed and pushed the window open to let some air in. I looked outside. The moon shone bright, and I saw our truck and the other cars parked in the driveway in front of the house. I left the curtains pulled open, and then I looked down at Stump where the moonlight spread across his face. I lay down beside him and stared up at the ceiling while the breeze moved through the curtains over the bed. I thought about how it felt just like sleeping in our bed at home, and for a minute I imagined that Mama hadn’t come into our bedroom to wake us up yet.

I closed my eyes and thought about me and Stump lying out in the ferns down by the creek where the sun that came through the trees was still bright on his face. There was an old green frog croaking somewhere along the creek, and his voice sounded like a loose banjo string, and I knew if I didn’t keep an eye on Stump he’d take to looking around for that frog until I’d have to get up and go hunting after him. I tried my best to keep my eyes open, but sometimes the water gurgling in the creek can sound like people talking, and I listened to them talk until I drifted off to sleep in all that warm sun, and when I woke up I saw that Stump had fallen asleep too, and it could be late now with the light out of the trees and the air turned nice and cool. I looked at his face until he blinked his eyes and looked up to where the sunlight faded in the treetops and smiled.

“We better get on home,” I whispered.

There was a noise like an old car driving fast down the road, and I laid there with my eyes closed and listened. I heard footsteps running through loose gravel and a screen door slamming shut and the sound of my daddy’s voice come through the walls in a room far away from us. The knob turned on the bedroom door, and I wished it was Mama coming to wake us up even though neither one of us was asleep, and I opened my eyes into that soft moonlight with Stump still laying right there beside me.

“Jess,” somebody said. I looked up and saw Daddy standing in the doorway holding out his hand to me. I couldn’t see his face because he was looking away into the other room where the lights were on. I wanted to tell him about what I’d seen, about how they’d carried him out of the church, that he was in here on the bed with me, but the way Daddy stood there made it seem like it was too dark and quiet for me to say anything at all.

I climbed down from the bed and walked over to Daddy where he stood in the doorway still looking into the other room, and he took my hand in his and it was rough and dry and he led me into the dining room, and then he was in there with the door closed and I heard him dragging a chair across the floor toward the bed.

I walked over to the window in the dining room and pulled the curtains back a little and looked outside. It was completely dark out there, but I could make out the shapes of the cars in the driveway and the little trees and the bushes around in the yard. Something caught my eye out by the road, and I looked and saw somebody standing there smoking a cigarette. I watched that glowing orange tip move from their mouth down to their side, and then back up to their mouth again. I couldn’t tell who it was out there, so I walked over to the switch and turned the lights out on the chandelier over the table and the dining room went dark. I walked back to the window and pulled the curtains back again and saw an old, beat-up truck parked out by the road in front of the house where a man stood smoking a cigarette and leaning up against the hood. I knew he must be the man Mama wanted me to call Grandpa. He had his cap pulled low and he looked at the ground, and even though I couldn’t see his face good he still didn’t look one bit like I thought he would. He tossed his cigarette into the gravel and rubbed it out with his boot. Then he folded his arms across his chest like he was waiting for something to happen, and he turned his head and looked in the direction of the ridge on the other side of the road.

The house had just about gone quiet now, and I could barely hear Daddy through the bedroom door where he was sitting in that chair by the bed and whispering something to Stump. I stared out the window and tried hard to hear what Daddy said, but he was whispering too quiet. But then I heard Mama stirring on the sofa like she was turning over, and I heard Miss Lyle scoot her chair a little closer. I imagined Mama’s face as she opened her eyes and blinked at Miss Lyle like she’d been sleeping and she’d just woke up from a dream. Outside the man Mama said to call Grandpa turned his face away from the ridge and looked down the road and coughed and spit something into the gravel.

I let the curtain close, and I sat down on the floor and put my back against the wall. I folded my arms over my knees and I rested my head to hide my face, and then I sat there and thought about what Daddy might be whispering to Stump in the next room, and I cried and cried and I just couldn’t get myself to stop.

THE BEDROOM DOOR OPENED, AND FROM WHERE I SAT ON THE FLOOR I could look under the table and see my daddy’s boots walk across the floor. He walked around the room past the chairs until he stood right in front of where I was sitting. I didn’t look up at him, so Daddy squatted down and put his hand on my head.

“Hey, buddy,” he said. “Hey, Jess.”

I finally looked up at him, and I figured my eyes looked good and swollen with all the crying I’d done that day. Daddy looked at me, and then he pulled me to him and I put my face in his shirt. I could smell him now, and he smelled like he always does, like the barn and his own sweat from the collar of the shirt he’s worn while he worked in the field, and for just a minute I felt better because he smelled like him and that meant he was finally there with me. He put his arms around me and hugged me tight. He stood up straight and picked me up and kept on hugging me, and I figured if somebody was watching us it would look funny with my legs hanging so close to the ground, but I didn’t say nothing because right then I liked the way it felt for him to hold me. I kept my face pressed up against his shirt collar, and he carried me through the dining room past the table and into the front room.

Mama was sitting up on the sofa now with both her feet on the floor. Miss Lyle had gotten up out of her chair, and she sat on the sofa right beside Mama. When Daddy carried me in, they were both already looking up at us like they’d been expecting us to walk in and it had taken us too long to do it. Mama and Daddy just looked at each other.

“I called the sheriff, Julie,” Daddy finally said to her. “Why hadn’t nobody called him yet?”

Mama and Miss Lyle just sat there and looked up at him, but they didn’t say nothing. Daddy waited for Mama to answer him.

“Chambliss tell you not to call?” Daddy asked her.

“Ben,” Miss Lyle said, “why don’t we just wait until-”

“Chambliss tell you not to call him?” Daddy asked Mama again.

“Yes,” Mama whispered.

There was the sound of another car coming down the road, and Daddy carried me over to the screen door and we both looked out. The moon wasn’t giving off enough light, and Daddy felt around on the wall right inside the door until he found a light switch, and when he flipped it the floodlights came on in the front yard. An old red truck pulled into the driveway behind ours; I could see three men sitting in it. When I looked close, I saw that one of them was Mr. Gene Thompson, and the other two were the men I’d seen smoking out by the road that morning who’d had all that Brylcreem in their hair. The man Mama had told me to call Grandpa had already lit up another cigarette, and he was leaning up against the front of his truck. He didn’t even turn around to see who’d pulled up in the driveway. Mr. Thompson and those men sat in the truck for a minute like they were trying to decide if they should get out or not, but Mr. Thompson finally opened the door and then the driver opened his and they all got out and started walking up the gravel driveway toward the house. The two men I didn’t know were about as old as Daddy, and they still had on their church clothes. Mr. Thompson was walking behind them. His lip had a little bloody scab on it from where Mama had busted it that morning when she was fighting with him and trying to get him to turn her loose.