Wiley Cash - A Land More Kind Than Home

“This is an old truck, ain’t it?” my grandpa said, but I didn’t say nothing back to him.

We rode alongside the river and I looked through the windshield down past the other side of the truck, and I could just barely see the water shining in between the trees in that little bit of moonlight. I thought about me and Stump and Joe Bill skipping rocks this morning, and then I thought about how long ago it seemed that we were all together down there on the bank. Through the trees I could see the lights from Marshall twinkling farther down the river. I knew we’d pass the church soon and if I wanted to I could look to my right out my window at it when we did, but I decided that I didn’t want to. I just stared straight out at the headlights, but I knew when we passed the church just the same.

My grandpa took the road up to the highway, and I felt us climbing the hill and I heard his old truck pulling hard like it was straining to make it. When we stopped at the stop sign at the top of the hill, an ambulance turned off the highway and passed us and headed down toward the river from where we’d just come. The ambulance didn’t have its emergency lights on or its siren blaring, and I noticed how slow it was driving. I looked out the back window and watched its taillights disappear into the darkness at the bottom of the hill. When I turned around again, I saw that my grandpa was staring at it in his rearview mirror. He sat there just looking at it for a second longer, and then he put his foot on the gas and we turned left onto the highway.

“YOUR DADDY AND ME TOOK A WALK IN HIS FIELDS THIS EVENING,” he said. “There’s a lot of burley tobacco to be brought in. A lot of work that’s needing to be done.” He sat there, and I could tell he was trying to think of something else to say so it wouldn’t be so quiet while we drove.

“Mr. Gant helps Daddy do all that stuff,” I said, just to let him know that Daddy didn’t need him around all the time just because he’d decided to come back and surprise Daddy all of a sudden. I felt him look over at me, but I stared straight ahead at the road.

“Did you know that when your daddy was your age me and him used to work tobacco together?” I shook my head no. “Well, it’s true,” he said. “I used to have me some burley patches, and I’d take your daddy out in the field with me when he was about as big as you. Now there’s a whole mess of tobacco in your daddy’s field, and I’m the one helping him.” I felt him look over at me again, and I turned my head and looked out my window and watched the rocky sides of the mountain whip past the truck in the darkness.

“We’re going to need some help getting that burley in and getting it hung up in the barn,” he said. “Would you be interested in helping?”

I didn’t answer him. Instead I laid my head back on the seat and closed my eyes and pictured me and Stump hiding out in the barn and spying on Daddy and Mr. Gant like we used to before Mama caught us and whipped us for doing it. Daddy and Mr. Gant have got the sled full of burley, and they’re carrying it inside the barn where it’s hot and dusty and dark. I like the way our barn smells, and with the burley hanging up in there and drying it takes to smelling sweet and I like it even more. I watch my daddy and some other men climb up the beams toward the ceiling and they wait up there until Mr. Gant starts jerking the burley off the sled. It’s so quiet with none of them doing nothing but breathing heavy and passing those sticks of burley up, up, up toward Daddy. I think about looking up to see Daddy way up high off the ground, and I think about how if they’d let me help them my hands would get good and sticky from the tar and I’d try to pick it off my fingers while I waited on Mr. Gant to hand me another load so I could pass it on to somebody else until it ended up in the rafters with Daddy. I opened my eyes and took a quick look over at my grandpa.

“You’d be a big help if you’ve got a mind for working,” he said. Then he said, “Let me see your hand.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Just let me see it,” he said. I held out my left hand, and he took it in his. His fingers were tough, and the skin of his palm felt thick and hard. He rubbed his thumb over my palm, and I felt his hand jumping and his fingers twitching like he couldn’t keep them still. “You’ve got them,” he said. “I figured you would.” He let go of my hand, and I put it back in my lap.

“Got what?” I asked.

“Farming hands,” he said. “You got hands just like your daddy. Yes, sir,” he said, “just like him.”

He turned the knob on the radio and tuned it in to old-timey country music.

“You can put it on whatever you want,” he said.

It only took me a second of listening to the song before I knew it was Patsy Cline. Daddy used to play her records all the time and try and get Mama to dance with him. He said a sweeter, sadder voice never came out of the mountains. I listened to her sing, and I heard that it was a sad, slow song, but I didn’t change it. I wasn’t interested in listening to nothing else.

“YOU WANT A COLD DRINK?” MY GRANDPA ASKED ME. HE’D PULLED off the highway into the parking lot in front of Messley’s store and stopped the truck under the little roof by the gas pump. I shook my head no because I didn’t want him thinking he had to buy me something just to get me to talk to him.

“I’ll get you one just in case,” he said. He opened the door and got out and slammed it shut. The driver’s-side window was rolled down, and he folded his arms and rested them on the door and looked in at me. “What kind of drink you want?” he asked.

“It don’t matter,” I said.

“You like Sun Drop?”

“It’s fine,” I said.

“What about a Nehi Peach?”

“It don’t matter,” I said again.

He turned, and I watched him walk out of the light coming from under the roof and across the dark parking lot to the screen door that led inside the store. The fluorescent lights were bright in there, and they made everything right outside the store seem even darker than it was. Some folding chairs and a couple of rockers sat outside the screen door, and I knew Mr. Messley and some other old men would stay outside and talk and smoke pipes and cigarettes all day when it was hot. Daddy said Mr. Messley was so old that his spine had gone crooked and that was why he was so hunched over and always carried a cane. When he sat outside he leaned his cane against his knee, and he kept it there until it was time for him to get up again. When people walked by on their way into the store, they said, “Hey, Messley,” and Mr. Messley grumbled under his breath because he knew he had to get up and go inside just to see if they wanted anything.

There was a bug zapper plugged in and hanging just under the metal roof by the gas pump, and I sat in my grandpa’s truck and looked through the windshield and watched it fry moths and mosquitoes. It glowed purple, and every now and then I heard it zap a bug and I saw a little spark shoot out. I could hear the crickets out in the shadows too, and I listened to them chirping, and then I heard my grandpa’s voice inside the store. I heard a loud noise like something had just crashed to the floor, and then I heard Mr. Messley and my grandpa yelling at each other.

My grandpa pushed open the screen door so hard that it slammed against the wall and swung back and slammed shut again. Mr. Messley opened the screen door behind my grandpa and came hobbling outside with his cane like he was chasing him. His face was red and angry-looking, and he was shaking his fist.

“I ain’t never done it once on a Sunday!” he hollered. “And I sure as hell ain’t going to start doing it for you!”

My grandpa walked toward the truck, but he stopped and turned around and looked at Mr. Messley. He stood there and stared at him for a minute like maybe he was thinking about punching him, and I pictured him hollering for my daddy and running through the yard before he kicked that man in the face, and in my mind I watched that man’s nose spray blood all over his shirt. But my grandpa didn’t do nothing to Mr. Messley. He just stood there and stared at him. The sound of that bug lamp zapping those moths was the only thing I could hear. I couldn’t even hear those crickets now. My grandpa opened the door to the truck, and Mr. Messley went back inside. I could see him watching us through the screen door.