Wiley Cash - A Land More Kind Than Home

Daddy put me down and pushed me toward the sofa where Mama sat. He looked at Mama and Miss Lyle.

“Y’all lock this door behind me,” he said. “They ain’t coming in here.” He went to step outside, and Miss Lyle stood up and walked toward the door.

“Ben,” she said.

Daddy turned around and looked at her, and through the screen I could see Mr. Thompson and those men coming up the driveway.

“You lock this door,” he said.

Daddy turned and pushed the screen door open and walked down the porch steps into the yard. The door slammed behind him. Mama hollered out his name and stood up from the sofa and reached for me, but I was too far away for her to catch me and she didn’t even hardly try. Miss Lyle watched, and then she closed the front door and turned the lock. I couldn’t see nothing then, so I went over to the open window on the right-hand side of the door and pulled back the curtains.

“Jess,” Mama said, “come here and sit down.” I acted like I didn’t hear her. “Jess,” she said again. Miss Lyle stood behind me, and we watched Daddy walk up to Mr. Thompson and those two men. Mama sat back down on the sofa behind us, and I heard her whisper something under her breath, and I knew she was talking to herself and maybe she was even praying.

Those two men I didn’t know stood in between Daddy and Mr. Thompson, and I could tell they wanted to get by Daddy and go up the porch steps and into the house, but Daddy wouldn’t let them.

“Y’all ain’t going in there,” I heard him say. “Ain’t no reason to be out here in the first place. I’ve already called the sheriff, and he should be here any minute.”

One of the men tried to go right around Daddy anyway, and Daddy put his hand on the man’s chest and stopped him. The man looked down at where Daddy had put his hand on him, and he slapped it away and kept on walking toward the house. When he did that, Daddy hauled back and punched him right smack in the face and the man’s hands went up to his nose and he stumbled backward into the gravel and fell down right in front of our truck. Before he even hit the ground that other man had ahold of Daddy and they were down on the ground in the yard and wrestling and kicking up grass. Daddy finally got on top of the man, and when he did he started punching him in the face. Mr. Thompson stood behind Daddy and yanked on Daddy’s shirt and tried to pull him off. I could hear him hollering for Daddy to stop, but Daddy just kept on punching that man like he couldn’t even hear Mr. Thompson.

The man Daddy punched first was on his knees in the gravel, and his nose was busted and bleeding and the blood ran down his face and neck and onto his button-down shirt. He tried to wipe the blood off his face with the back of his hands, but it just kept on pouring out of his nose. He looked over to the yard where Mr. Thompson was trying to pull Daddy off the other man, and he put his hand down on the ground like he was about to stand up. I heard somebody hollering my daddy’s name, and I looked up at the road and saw my grandpa running down through the grass toward the house. The man on his knees looked up too, and when he did my grandpa swung his leg and kicked the man right in the face just like he was kicking a ball. The man’s nose made a sound like a tree limb snapping in two, and his head whipped around like it had come loose from his neck. He fell onto his back in the gravel, and he just laid there and I could see his chest puffing air like he’d just finished running as fast as he could and he couldn’t catch his breath. His arms and legs moved around through the gravel like he was trying to make a snow angel right there in the driveway, but he didn’t try to get up again.

My grandpa pushed Mr. Thompson up against the side of our truck, and Mr. Thompson stayed there and watched my grandpa try to get Daddy up off the man he was hitting.

“Ben,” I heard my grandpa say. “That’s enough.” My daddy’s fist was covered in blood, and his shirt was turned red from the man’s bloody face. “Stop it, Ben,” my grandpa said. He got Daddy up on his feet, and my daddy shook loose like he was going after Mr. Thompson now. “Goddamn it, that’s enough,” my grandpa said. He wrapped his arms around Daddy and tried to keep him from getting away. Daddy got free and turned around and pushed my grandpa in the chest.

“Get off me!” he screamed. “Don’t you ever touch me! Ever!” Daddy pushed my grandpa again, and then he turned around and faced the house and when he did I could see that he was crying. He put his hands over his eyes, and I saw they had blood all over them. He walked out toward the road where my grandpa’s truck was parked. My grandpa just stood there and watched him, and then he turned and looked at Mr. Thompson.

“Y’all need to go,” he said. “There wasn’t no reason for you to have come out here to start with.”

Miss Lyle stepped away from the window and unlocked the door and opened it and looked outside.

“Wait, Gene,” she told Mr. Thompson. “Let me get something to clean them boys up. After that y’all need to leave. Ben called the sheriff, and he’ll be here real soon. He don’t need to see any of this. It’s just going to make it worse than it already is.”

Miss Lyle closed the door and turned around and walked across the front room toward the kitchen. I could hear her in there opening and closing drawers and running water in the sink. She must’ve told them old people what had happened outside because I could hear them fussing and I could hear the sound of their chairs being pushed back from the table. Mama still sat on the sofa. When I looked at her, she stood up and walked over to me at the window. She pulled me to her, and I hugged her around the waist. We stood there and looked out at the yard where Mr. Thompson helped those men stand up and checked to see how bad they’d been hurt. Daddy was almost out of the reach of the floodlights at the top of the road, but I could see him leaning his head down on the hood of my grandpa’s truck, and his shoulders were shaking like he was crying. My grandpa stood in the center of the yard. His back was to us, but I saw him reach into his shirt pocket and pull out a pack of cigarettes. He shook one out and lit it and looked out at the road like he was watching Daddy too.

DADDY WAS STILL OUT THERE WHEN THE SHERIFF PULLED UP WITH the red and blue police lights spinning on top of his car. He parked behind my grandpa’s truck and turned off the lights and got out and left his door open, and then he leaned in and picked up a cowboy hat where it had been sitting on the seat beside him. He put it on. I could see him good with the light coming from inside his car. He was about as old as my grandpa; his cowboy hat was white, and his brown button-down shirt was wet where his armpits were sweating. The little silver star on his chest shone when the light caught it. He left his arm propped up on the car door, and he just stood there and looked out at the yard.

Miss Lyle and two of those old women were out there with wet washcloths wiping the blood off those men’s faces. Somebody had given one of those men a sandwich bag full of ice, and he was holding it up to his nose.

“I think it’s broke,” I heard one of those old women tell him.

My grandpa sat on the porch steps smoking and watching Daddy out at the road. When Mama saw the sheriff, she walked through the dining room to the bedroom where Stump was still laying on the bed and she closed the door behind her. Before she left she told me to stay inside. I asked her if Daddy was crying, but she just told me to leave him alone and not bother him. I figured she’d never seen him cry either and it had probably scared her too.

I heard the sheriff walking through the gravel, and then I could just barely see him moving like a shadow until he stepped into the grass and the floodlights hit him and made that little star on his chest shine. While he walked he looked over his left shoulder out at the road, where I knew my daddy was standing.