Wiley Cash - A Land More Kind Than Home

All of a sudden, Pastor Chambliss flew right past my eyes and then disappeared, and the way he was moving looked like he might’ve been dancing or skipping or hopping down in front of the church. A second later he flew by again, and then he came back and stood right in front of me. I could see him good. He stayed there with his back to me and Joe Bill, and he just stared at all those people where they swayed back and forth with their eyes closed and their hands waving way up over their heads, their fists opening and closing like they were trying to reach up and grab something out of the sky.

Pastor Chambliss had his hair buzzed so short that you couldn’t hardly notice the little bald spot right there in the back, and I probably wouldn’t have noticed it myself if he hadn’t been sweating and the light hadn’t caught it. He looked like somebody who’d been in the army to me, even though he was probably too old to be a soldier now. The back of his blue dress shirt was dark with sweat, and the shirtsleeve on his left arm was rolled up past his elbow, but he had that right one buttoned tight at his wrist, and I knew why-his right hand was scary to look at: bright pink and wrinkled up. He kept that right sleeve rolled down tight, but he couldn’t keep his hand hidden; everybody in the church had seen it, and most of them had probably got so used to it that they never even thought about it anymore. But I’d thought about that hand all weekend long because I’d seen it out in the bright sunlight two days before, and I saw the whole arm it was attached to too, and I’d seen where that pink skin ran up to his shoulder and covered his chest like chewing gum does when you blow a bubble and it pops and spreads itself out across your cheeks.

ON THE FRIDAY BEFORE, AFTER THE SCHOOL BUS HAD DROPPED ME off at the top of the road, I’d found Mama and Stump sitting on the porch steps like they were waiting on me. They were both holding small wooden boxes that looked like cages with handles on them, and when I got close enough to hear what she was telling Stump I heard the handle squeaking where Mama swung her box back and forth in front of her. She looked up and smiled when she saw me.

“There you are,” she said. “How was school?”

“What are y’all doing out here?” I asked.

“Waiting on you,” she said.

“What for?”

“Because I figured you might want to go out and catch a few salamanders for y’all’s room.” I dropped my book bag by her feet on the bottom step, and I looked at the wooden box where she held it in front of her. She held it out to me, and I took it by the handle.

“You serious?” I asked.

“Well,” she said, “y’all been wanting some, and I figured you might as well have them if you can take care of them. We’ll have to find something to put them in, but this’ll do for now. I’ll take your book bag inside, and you can go on down to the creek if you promise to keep that shirt and those pants clean.”

“I will,” I said. I looked at the box in my hand. “Where did you get these?”

“From a friend,” she said. “He’s letting me borrow them just so y’all can use them. But we can’t keep them, okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

She picked up my book bag and stood up from the steps and turned to go into the house, but she stopped and looked back at me and Stump. “See if you can catch five salamanders,” she said. “I think that would be plenty for us to have. So see if you can catch five.” I looked at Stump like I couldn’t believe what she’d just said, and I swung my cage by its handle and bumped it against his like I was making a toast.

“You ready?” I asked. He jumped up from the porch, and we started across the yard toward the creek at the bottom of the hill.

But we didn’t catch any salamanders. We couldn’t even find a single one. It was probably the only time I’d ever gone off looking for salamanders that I couldn’t find them, and when we walked back up the hill toward the house all we had in those little boxes was a few sticks and some blades of grass that reminded me of the terrarium we had in my classroom at school.

My pants were soaked up past my knees and I carried my shoes with my socks stuffed down inside. I was afraid that Mama was going to be mad at me for getting so dirty, especially after I’d told her I wouldn’t. Stump had left his shoes on while he was walking through the creek, and I could hear water sloshing around in them and they squeaked when he walked. I knew Mama wasn’t going to like that either.

We came up alongside the house, and I stopped beside the rain barrel. It sat up off the ground on some concrete blocks, and the gutter ran down into it from the roof. I squatted down and turned the spigot. I heard bubbles come up inside the barrel when the spigot opened and the water started pouring out.

“Wash off your hands,” I said to Stump. “We’d better wash our shoes too. Mama’s going to be mad if we bring all this mud in the house.”

He sat his box down in the grass by the rain barrel, and he held his hands under the water and rubbed them together to get the dirt off.

“Stick your shoes under there too,” I said. He picked up one of his shoes and held it under the water, and I found a stick and used it to scratch the mud off the sides of his shoe. Then he held the other one under there and I did the same thing. Stump turned off the spigot, and when he did we heard them inside the house. I looked up at the window where Mama and Daddy’s bedroom was, and me and Stump stayed kneeled down there in the grass and listened to them. They were making the same noises that we heard them make in the morning sometimes when they didn’t know we were awake yet.

Stump stood up straight and looked up at the window, and he turned his head like he was trying to hear them better. He tossed his shoes onto the ground behind him and walked up closer to the house.

“One of them’s going to look out that window and see you,” I whispered. “If they do, they’ll come outside here and wear us out for spying on them.”

I turned the spigot back on and put my shoe under the water and scratched some more of the mud off the bottom with that stick. Stump walked right up against the house and reached up his hands to the window ledge like he was thinking about pulling himself up to look in.

“You’d better stop it,” I whispered louder, and I reached out that stick and poked him on the back of his leg. He looked back toward me and stepped away from the window, and then he put his hands flat on top of the rain barrel and grabbed on to the gutter and pulled himself up. I turned the spigot off, and I heard that big bubble inside there float up to the top again.

“Stump,” I said, “you’d better get down. That ain’t going to hold you,” but he acted like he couldn’t even hear me. “You’d better get down,” I said again.

When I stood up, I could feel the mud and wet grass squishing between my toes, and I could hear Mama and Daddy’s bed squeaking inside their room. Stump put his hands on the window ledge and stood on his tiptoes on top of the rain barrel and tried to look in there. I saw the concrete blocks under the rain barrel move just a little, and then it leaned a little to the side like it might tip over. I put my hands on the sides of it to try and keep it from falling, and I felt the water in there roll around from side to side.

“Stump,” I whispered. I reached out and tugged at his leg, but he just stayed up on his tiptoes and tried to see in the window like he didn’t feel me pulling on him. “It ain’t going to hold you,” I said. I tugged at his leg again, and when I did all that muddy water on his feet made him lose his balance. His feet went out from under him, and he fell on his butt on top of the rain barrel. It ripped loose from the gutter and tipped toward the yard, and Stump slipped and fell up against the house and landed on top of those concrete blocks. The rain barrel turned over in the grass with its top busted off. Water poured out onto the ground and ran down through the yard, and Stump just laid there on his back on top of those concrete blocks.