Джон Гришэм - A Painted House

“Worst case of colic I’ve ever seen,” I heard Gran say.

Later, while Libby was again rocking the baby on the front porch, I heard another conversation. Seems that when I was a baby I’d had a rough bout with colic. My mother’s mother, my grandmother, who was now dead and who’d lived in town in a painted house, had given me a few bites of vanilla ice cream. I had immediately stopped crying, and within a few days the colic was gone.

At some point later in my babyhood I’d had another bout. Gran did not normally keep store-bought ice cream in her freezer. My parents had loaded me up in the truck and headed for town. Along the way I’d stopped crying and fallen asleep. They figured the motion of the moving vehicle had done the trick.

My mother sent me to find my father. She took the baby from Libby, who was quite anxious to get rid of it, and before long we were heading for the truck.

“Are we goin’ to town?” I asked.

“Yes,” my mother said.

“What about him?” my father asked, pointing to the baby. “He’s supposed to be a secret.”

My mother had forgotten about that. If we were spotted in town with a mysterious baby, the gossip would be so thick it would stop traffic.

“We’ll worry about that when we get there,” she said, then slammed the door. “Let’s go.”

My father cranked the engine and shifted into reverse. I was in the middle, the baby just inches from my shoulder. After a brief pause, the baby erupted again. By the time we got to the river I was ready to pitch the damned thing out the window.

Once over the bridge, though, a curious thing happened. The baby slowly grew quiet and still. It closed its mouth and eyes and fell sound asleep. My mother smiled at my father as if to say, “See, I told you so.”

As we made our way to town, my parents whispered back and forth. They decided that my mother would get out of the truck down by our church, then hurry to Pop and Pearl’s to buy the ice cream. They worried that Pearl would be suspicious as to why she was buying ice cream, and only ice cream, since we didn’t need anything else at the moment, and why exactly my mother was in town on a Wednesday afternoon. They agreed that Pearl’s curiosity could not be satisfied under any circumstances and that it would be somewhat amusing to let her suffer from her own nosiness. As clever as she was, Pearl would never guess that the ice cream was for an illegitimate baby we were hiding in our truck.

We stopped at our church. No one was watching so my mother handed the baby to me with strict instructions on how to properly cradle such a creature. By the time she closed the door, its mouth was wide open, its eyes glowing, its lungs filled with anger. It wailed twice and nearly scared me to death before my father popped the clutch and we were off again, loose on the streets of Black Oak. The baby looked at me and stopped crying.

“Just don’t stop,” I said to my father.

We drove by the gin, a depressing sight with its lack of activity. We circled behind the Methodist church and the school, then turned south onto Main Street. My mother came out of Pop and Pearl’s with a small paper bag, and, not surprisingly, Pearl was right behind her, talking away. They were chatting as we drove past. My father waved as if nothing were out of the ordinary.

I just knew we were about to get caught with the Latcher baby. One loud shriek from its mouth and the whole town would learn our secret.

We looped around the gin again, and when we headed toward the church we saw my mother waiting for us. As we rolled to a stop to get her, the baby’s eyes came open. His lower lip trembled. He was ready to scream when I thrust him at her and said, “Here, take him.”

I scrambled out of the truck before she could get in. My quickness surprised them. “Where you goin’, Luke?” my father demanded.

“Y’all ride around for a minute. I need to buy some paint.”

“Get in the truck!” he said.

The baby cried out, and my mother quickly jumped in. I ducked behind the truck and ran as fast as I could toward the street.

Behind me I heard another cry, one not nearly as loud, then the truck started moving.

I ran to the hardware store, back to the paint counter, where I asked the clerk for three gallons of white Pittsburgh Paint.

“Only got two,” he said.

I was too surprised to say anything. How could a hardware store run out of paint? “I should have some in by next Monday,” he said.

“Gimme two,” I said.

I was sure two gallons wouldn’t finish the front of the house, but I gave him six one-dollar bills, and he handed me the change. “Let me get these for you,” he said.

“No, I can do it,” I said, reaching for the two buckets. I strained to lift them, then waddled down the aisle, almost tipping over. I lugged them out of the store and to the sidewalk. I looked both ways for traffic, and I listened for the wail of a sick baby. Thankfully the town was quiet.

Pearl reappeared on the sidewalk in front of her store, eyes darting in all directions. I hid behind a parked car. Then I saw our truck coming south, barely moving, looking very suspicious. My father saw me and rolled to a stop in the middle of the street. I yanked the two buckets up with all the might I could muster and ran to the truck. He jumped out to help me. I leapt into the back of the truck, and he handed me the paint. I preferred to ride back there, away from the littlest Latcher. Just when my father got behind the wheel again, the baby let out a yelp.

The truck lurched forward, and the baby was quiet. I yelled, “Howdy, Pearl!” as we sped past.

Libby was sitting on the front steps with Gran, waiting for us. When the truck stopped, the baby began bawling. The women rushed it to the kitchen, where they began stuffing it with ice cream.

“Ain’t enough gasoline in Craighead County to keep that thing quiet,” my father said.

Fortunately, the ice cream soothed it. Little Latcher fell asleep in his mother’s arms.

Because vanilla ice cream had worked when I’d had colic, this cure was taken as further evidence that the baby was part Chandler. I was not exactly comforted by this.

Having a barn full of Latchers was an event that we certainly had not planned on. And while we were at first comforted by our own Christian charity and neighborliness, we were soon interested in how long they might be with us. I broached the subject first over supper when, after a long discussion about the day’s events, I said, “Reckon how long they’ll stay?”

Pappy had the opinion that they would be gone as soon as the floodwaters receded. Living in another farmer’s barn was tolerable under the most urgent of circumstances, but no one with an ounce of self-respect would stay a day longer than necessary.

“What are they gonna eat when they go back?” Gran asked. “There’s not a crumb of food left in that house.” She went on to predict that they’d be with us until springtime.

My father speculated that their dilapidated house couldn’t withstand the flood, and that there’d be no place for them to return to. Plus, they had no truck, no means of transportation. They’d been starving on their land for the last ten years. Where else would they go? Pappy seemed a little depressed by this view.

My mother mainly listened, but at one point she did say that the Latchers were not the type of people who’d be embarrassed by living in someone else’s barn. And she worried about the children, not only the obvious problems of health and nutrition, but also their education and spiritual growth.

Pappy’s prediction of a swift departure was batted around the table and eventually voted down. Three against one. Four, if you counted my vote.