me.
"Sounds like a car motor," I said.
"She ain't got no car motor in 'er," he said.
"Might," I said.
"I don't much think she has, though."
"Might have a little 'un, kinda like a cat motor; I mean a regler
little motor fer cats," I said.
"What'd she be wantin' with a cat motor?"
"Lotsa things is got motors in 'em. Motors is engines. Engines makes
things go. Makes noise jest like ol' mama cat. Motor makes wheels go 'round,
so cats might have a real little motor ta make legs go, an' tail go, an'
feet move, an' nose go, an' ears wiggle, an' eyes go 'round, an' mouth fly
open, an' mebbe her stomach is' er gas tank." I was running my hand along
over the old mama cat's fur, feeling of each part as I talked, head, tail,
legs, mouth, eyes, and stomach; and the old cat had a big smile on her face.
"Wanta see if she's really got a motor inside of 'er? I'll go an' git
Ma's butcher knife, an' you hold 'er legs, an' I'll cut er belly open; an'
if she's got a motor in 'er, by jacks, I wanta see it! Want me to?" Lawrence
asked me.
"Cut 'er belly open?" I asked him. "Ya might'n find 'er motor when ya
got cut in there!"
"I c'n find it, if she's got one down in there! I helped Pa cut rabbits
an' squirrels an' fishes open, an' I never did see no motor in them!"
"No, but did you ever hear a rabbit er a squirrel either one, or a fish
make a noise like mama cat makes?"
"No. Never did."
"Well, mebbe that's why they ain't got no motor. Mebbe they gotta
differnt kinda motor. Don't make no kind of a noise."
"Might be. An' some of th' time mama cat don't make no noise either;
'cause some of th' time ya cain't even hear no motor in 'er belly. What
then?"
"Maybe she's just got th' key turned off!"
"Turned off?" Lawrence asked me.
"Might be. My papa's gotta car. His car's gotta key. Ya turn th' key
on, an' th' car goes like a cat. Ya turn th' key off, an' it quits."
'There yore hand goes ag'in! Didn' I tell you not ta touch them little
baby kittens? They ain't got no eyes open ta see with yet; you cain't put
yore hands on' em!" He cut his eyes around at me.
"Ohhhhhppppp! All right. I'm awful, awful sorry, mama cat; an' I'm
awful, awful sorry, little baby cats!" And I let my hand fall back down on
the old mama cat's back.
"That's all right ta pat 'er all you want, but she'll reach up an" take
'er claws, an' rip yore hand plumb wide open if you make one of her little
cats cry!" he told me.
"Know somethin', Lawrence, know somethin'?"
"What about?" he asked me.
"People says when I wuz a baby, jest like one of these here little baby
cats, only a little bit bigger, mebbe, my mama got awful bad sick when I wuz
borned under th' covers."
"I heard Ma an' them talk about her," he told me.
"What did they talk about?" I asked him.
"Oohhh, I dunno, she wuz purty bad off.''
"What made 'er bad off?"
"Yer dad."
"My papa did?"
"What people says."
"He's good ta me. Good ta my mama. What makes people say he made my
mama git sick?"
"Politics."
"What's them?''
"I dunno what politics is. Just a good way to make some money. But you
always have troubles. Have fights. Carry two guns ever' day. Yore dad likes
lots of money. So he got some people ta vote fer 'im, so then he got 'im two
guns an' went around c'lectin' money. Yore ma didn't like yore dad ta always
be pokin' guns, shootin', fightin', an' so, well, she just worried an'
worried, till she got sick at it--an' that was when you was borned a baby
not much bigger'n one of these here little cats, I reckon.'' Lawrence was
digging his fingernails into the soft white pine of the box, looking at the
nest of cats. "Funny thing 'bout cats. All of 'em's got one ma, an' all of
'ems differnt colors. Which is yore pet color? Mine's this 'un, an' this
'un, an' this 'un."
"I like all colors cats. Say, Lawrence, what does crazy mean?"
"Means you ain't got good sense.''
"Worried?"
"Crazy's more'n just worry."
"Worse'n worryin'?"
"Shore. Worry starts, an' you do that fer a long, long time, an' then
maybe you git sick 'er somethin', an' ya go all, well, you just git all
mixed up 'bout ever'thing."
"Is ever'body sick like my mama?"
"I don't guess."
"Reckin could all of our folks cure my mama?"
"Might. Wonder how?"
"If ever single livin' one of 'em would all git together an' git rid of
them ol' mean, bad politics, they'd all feel lots better, an' wouldn't fight
each other so much, an' that'd make my mama feel better."
Lawrence looked out through the leaves of the bushes. "Wonder where
Warren's headin', goin' off down toward th' barn? Be right still; he's
walkin' past us. He'll hear us talkin'."
I whispered real low and asked Lawrence, "Whatcha bein' so still for?
'Fraida Warren?"
And Lawrence told me, "Hushhh. Naw. 'Fraid fer th' cats."
"Why 'bоut th' cats?"
"Warren don't like cats."
"Why?" I was still whispering.
"Just don't. Be still. Ssshhh."
"Why?" I went on.
"Sez cats ain't no good. Warren kills all th' new little baby cats that
gits born'd on th' place. I had these hid out under th' barn. Don't let 'im
know we're here...."
Warren got within about twenty feet of us, and we could see his long
shadow falling over our rosebush; and then for a little time we couldn't see
him, and the rosebush blocked out of sight of him. Still, we could hear his
new sharp-toed leather shoes screaking every time he took a step. Lawrence
tapped me on the shoulder. I looked around and he was motioning for me to
grab up one side of the white pine box. I got a hold and he grabbed the
other side. We skidded the box up close to the rock foundation of the house,
and partly in behind the rosebush.
Lawrence held his breath and I held my hand over my mouth. Warren's
screaky shoes was the only sound I could hear. Lawrence laid his body down
over the box of cats. I laid down to hide the other half of the box, and the
screak, screak, screak got louder. I whiffed my nose and smelled the loud
whang of hair tonic on Warren's hair. His white silk shirt threw flashes of
white light through the limbs of the roses, and Lawrence moved his lips so
as to barely say, "Montgomery girl." I didn't catch him the first time, so
he puckered his lips to tell me again, and when he bent over my way, he
stuck a thorn into his shoulder, and talked out too loud:
"Montgomery--"
The screak of Warren's shoes stopped by the side of the bush. He looked
all around, and took a step back, then one forward. And he had us trapped.
I didn't have the guts to look up at him. I heard his shoes screak and
I knew that he was rocking from one foot to the other one, standing with his
hands on his hips, looking down on the ground at Lawrence and me. I shivered
and could feel Lawrence quiver under his shirt. Then I turned my head over
and looked out from under Lawrence's arm, both of us still hugging the box,
and heard Warren say, "What was that you boys was a-sayin'?"
"Tellin' Woody about somebody," Lawrence told Warren.
"Somebody? Who?" Warren didn't seem to be in any big rush.
"Somebody. Somebody you know," Lawrence said.
"Who do I know?" Warren asked him.
"Th' Mon'gom'ry folks,'' Lawrence said.
"You're a couple of dirty little low-down liars! All you know how to do
is to hide off in under some Goddamed bush, an' say silly things about other
decent people!" Warren told us.
"We wuzn't makin' no fun, swear ta God," Lawrence told him.
"What in the hell was you layin' under there talkin' about? Somethin'
your're tryin' to hide! Talk out!"
"I seen you was all nice an' warshed up clean, an' told Woody you was
goin' over ta Mon'gom'ry's place.''
"What else?"
"Nuthin else. 'At's all I said, swear ta God, all I told you, wasn't
it, Woody?"
" 'S all I heard ya say," I told him.
"Now ain't you a pair of little old yappin' pups? You know dam good an'
well you was teasin' me from behind 'bout Lola Montgomery! How come you two
hidin' here in th' first place? Just to see me walk past you with all of my
clean clothes on? See them new low-cut shoes? See how sharp th' toes are?
Feel with your finger, both of you, feel! That's it! See how sharp? I'd
ought to just take that sharp toe and kick both of your little rears."
"Quit! Quit that pushin' me!" Lawrence was yelling as loud as he could,
hoping Grandma would hear. Warren pushed him on the shoulder with the bottom
of his shoe, and tried to roll Lawrence over across the ground. Lawrence
swung onto his box of cats so tight that Warren had to kick as hard as he
could, and push Lawrence off the box.
The only thing I could think of to do was jump on top of the box and
cover it up. Lawrence was yelling as loud as he could yell. Warren was
laughing. I wasn't saying anything.
"Whut's that box you're a holdin' onto there so tight?" Warren asked
me.
"Jest a plain ol' box!" Lawrence was crying and talking.
"Jest a plain wooden box," I told Warren.
"What's on th' inside of it, runts?"
"Nuthin's in it!"
"Jist a ol' empty one!"
And Warren put his shoe sole on my back and pushed me over beside
Lawrence. "I'll just take me a look! You two seems mighty interested in
what's inside of that box!"
"You оl' mean outfit, you! God, I hate you! You go on over an' see yore
ol' 'Gomery girl, an' leave us alone! We ain't a-hurtin' you!" Lawrence was
jumping up. He started to draw back and fight Warren, but Warren just took
his open hand and pushed Lawrence about fifteen feet backwards, and he fell
flat, screaming.
Warren put his foot on my shoulder and give me another shove. I went
about three feet. I tried to hold onto the box, but the whole works turned
over. The old mama cat jumped out and made a circle around us, meowing first
at Warren, and then at me and the little baby kittens cried in the split
cotton seed.
"Cat lovers!" Warren told us.
"You g'wan, an' let us be! Don't you tech them cats! Ma! Ma! Warr'n's
gonna hurt our cats!" Lawrence squawled out.
Warren kicked the loose cotton seed apart. "Just like
tearin' up a bird's nest!" he said. He put the sharp toe of his
shoe under the belly of the first little cat, and threw it up against the
rock foundation. "Meoww! Meoww! You little chicken killers! Egg stealers!"
He picked the second kitten up in the grip of his hand, and squeezed till
his muscles bulged up. He swung the kitten around and around, something like
a Ferris wheel, as fast as he could turn his arm, and the blood and entrails
of the kitten splashed across the ground, and the side of the house. Then he
held the little body out toward Lawrence and me. We looked at it, and it was
just like an empty hide. He threw it away out over the fence.
Warren took the second kitten, squeezed it, swung it over his head and
over the top wire of the fence. The third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and
seventh.
The poor old mama cat was running backwards, crossways, and all around
over the yard with her back humped up, begging against Warren's legs, and
trying to jump up and climb up his body to help her babies. He boxed her
away and she came back. He kicked her thirty feet. She moaned along the
rocks, smelling of her babies' blood and insides. She scratched dirt and dug
grass roots; then she made a screaming noise that chilled my blood and
jumped six feet, clawing at Warren's arm. He kicked her in the air and her
sides were broke and caved in. He booted her up against the side of the
house, and she laid there wagging her tail and meowing; and Warren grabbed
the box and splintered it against the rocks and the mama cat's head. He
grabbed up two rocks and hit her in the stomach both shots. He looked at me
and Lawrence, spit on us, threw the loose cotton seed into our faces, and
said, "Cat-lovin' bastards!" And he started walking on away toward the barn.
"You ain't no flesh an' blood of mine!" Lawrence cried after him.
"Hell with you, baby britches! Hell with you. I don't even want to be
yore dam brother!" Warren said over his shoulder.
"You ain't my uncle, neither," I told him, "not even my mama's half
brother! You ain't even nobody's halfway brother! I'm glad my mama ain't no
kin ta you! I'm glad I ain't!" I told him.
"Awwww. Whattaya know, whattaya know, you half-starved little runt?"
Warren was turned around, standing in the late sun with his shirt white and
pretty in the wind. "You done run yore mama crazy just bein' born! You
little old hard-luck bringer! You dam little old insane-asylum baby!" And
Warren walked away on down to the barn.
Then Lawrence rolled up onto his feet off of the grass and tore around
the side of the house hollering and telling Grandma what all Warren had done
to the cats.
I scrambled up over the fence and dropped down into the short-weed
patch. The old mama cat was twisting and moaning and squeezing through at
the bottom of the wire, and making her way out where Warren had slung her
little babies.
I saw the old mama walk around and around her first kitten in the
weeds, and sniffle, and smell, and lick the little hairs; then she took the
dead baby in her teeth, carried it through the weeds, the rag weeds,
gypsums, and cuckle burrs that are a part of all of Oklahoma.
She laid the baby down when she come to the edge of a little trickling
creek, and held up her own broken feet when she walked around the kitten
again, circling, looking down at it, and back up at me.
I got down on my hands and knees and tried to reach out and pet her.
She was so broke up and hurting that she couldn't stand still, and she
pounded the damp ground there with her tail as she walked a whole circle all
around me. I took my hand and dug a little hole in the sandy creek bank and
laid the dead baby in, and covered it up with a mound like a grave.
When I seen the old Mama Maltese holding her eyes shut with the lids
quivering and smell away into the air, I knew she was on the scent of her
second one.
When she brought it in, I dug the second little grave.
I was listening to her moan and choke in the weeds, dragging her belly
along the ground, with her two back legs limber behind her, pulling her body
with her front feet, and throwing her head first to one side and then to the
other.
And I was thinking: Is that what crazy is?
Chapter V
MISTER CYCLOME
"Here I am, Papa!" I ripped out the east door and went running down to
where Papa was. "Here I am! I wanta help shoot!"
"Get back away from that hole! Dynamite!" He hadn't noticed me as I
trotted out.
"Where 'bouts?" I was standing not more than three feet away from the
hole he'd been drilling through a rock' "Where?"
"Run! This way!" He grabbed me in his arms, covered me over with his
jacket and fell down flat against the ground, "Lay still! Down!"
The whole hill jarred. Rocks howled out over our heads.
"I wanna see!" I was trying to fight my way out from under him. "Lemme
out!"
"Keep down!" He hugged his jacket around me that much tighter. "Those
rocks just went up. They'll be down in a jiffy!"
I felt him duck his head down against mine. The rocks thumped all
around us and several peppered the jacket. The cloth was stretched tight. It
sounded like a war drum. "Wowie!" I said to Papa.
"You'll think, Wowie!" Papa laughed when he got up. He brushed his
clothes off good. "One of those rocks hit you on the head, and you wouldn't
think anything for a long time!"
"Le's go blow another'n up!" I was pacing around like a cat wanting
milk.
"All right! Come on! You can take the little hoe and dig a nice
ten-foot hole!"
"Goshamighty! How deep?"
"Teen feet."
"Lickety split! Lickety split!" I was chopping out a hole with the
little hoe. "Is this 'teen feet deep?"
"Keep on with your work!" Papa acted like a chain-gang boss. "Whew! I
don't believe I ever did see it get so hot this late in the stimmer. But I
guess we'll have to keep digging without air! We've just got to get this old
London Place fixed up. Then we can sell it to somebody and get some money
and buy us another better place. You like that?"
"I don't like nuthin' bad. I wanta move. Mama wants ta move, too. So
does Roy an' Clara, an' ever'body else."
"Yes, little boy, I know, I know."' Papa knocked the blue
rock smoke out of the hole every time his crowbar come down. "I like
everything that's good, don't you?"
"Mama had a piano an' lotsa good things when she was a little kid,
didn't she?" I kept leaning on the handle of my hoe. "An" now she ain't got
no nice things."
"Yes. She always loved the good things." Papa pulled a red bandana out
of his hip pocket and wiped the sweat from his face. "You know, Woody boy,
I'm afraid."
"'Fraida what?"
"This infernal heat. It's got me guessing." Papa looked all around in
every direction, sniffed in the air. "Don't know exactly. But it feels like
to me there's not a single breath of air stirring."
"Purty still, all right. I'm sweatin'!"
"Not a leaf. Not a blade of grass. Not a feather. Not a spider-web
stirring." He turned his face away to the north. A quick, fast breath of
cool air drifted across the hill.
"Good оl' cool wind!" I was puffing my lungs full of the new air
stirring. "Good ol', good оl', cool, cool wind!"
"Yes, I feel the cool wind." He stayed down on his hands, looking
everywhere, listening to every little sound. "And I don't like it!" He
yelled at me. "And you hadn't ought to say that you like it, either!"
"Papa, what'sa matter, huh?" I laid on my belly as close up beside Papa
as I could get, and looked everywhere that he did. "Papers an' leafs an'
feathers blowin'. You ain't really scared, are ya, Papa?"
Papa's voice sounded shaky and worried. "What do you know about
cyclones? You've never even seen one yet! Quit popping off at your mouth!
Everything that I've been working and fighting for in my whole life is tied
up right here in this old London Place!"
I never thought that I would see my dad so afraid of anything.
" 'Taint no good!"
"Shut your little mouth before I shut it for you!"
" 'Tain't no good!"
"Don't you dare talk back to your papa!"
" 'Tain't no good!"
"Woody, I'll split you hide!" Then he let his head drop down till his
chin touched the bib of his overhalls and his tears wet the watch pocket.
"What makes you say it's not any good, Woody?"
"Mama said it." I rolled a foot or two away from him. An' Mama cries
alla th' time, too!"
The wind rustled against the limbs of the locust trees across the road
running up the hill. The walnut trees frisked their heads in the air and
snorted at the wind getting harder. I heard a low whining sound everywhere
in the air as the spider webs, feathers, old flying papers, and dark clouds
swept along the ground, picking up the dust, and blocking out the sky.
Everything fought and pushed against the wind, and the wind fought
everything in its way.
"Woody, little boy, come over here."
"I'm a-gonna run." I stood up and looked toward the house.
"No, don't run." I had to stand extra still and quiet to hear Papa talk
in the wind. "Don't run. Don't ever run. Come on over here and let me hold
you on my lap."
I felt a feeling of some kind come over me like the chilly winds coming
over the hot hill. I turned nervous and scared and almost sick inside. I
fell down into Papa's lap, hugging him around the neck so tight his whiskers
rubbed my face nearly raw. I could feel his heart beating fast and I knew he
was afraid.
"Le's run!"
"You know, I'm not ever going to run any more, Woody, Not from people.
Not from my own self. Not from a cyclone."
"Not even from a lightnin' rod?"
"You mean a bolt of lightning? No. Not even from a streak of
lightning!"
"Thunner? `Tater wagon?"
"Not from thunder. Not from my own fear.''
"Skeerd?"
"Yes. I'm scared. I'm shaking right this minute."
"I felt ya shakin' when th' cyclome first come."
"Cyclone may miss us, little curly block. Then again, it may hit right
square on top of us. I just want to ask you a question. What if this cyclone
was to reach down with its mean tail and suck away everything we've got here
on this hill? Would you still like your old Papa? Would you still come over
and sit on my lap and hold me this tight around the neck?"
"I'd hug tighter."
"That's all I want to know." He straightened up a little and put both
arms around me so that when the wind blew colder I felt warmer. "Let's let
the wind get harder. Let's let the straw and the feathers fly! Let the old
wind go crazy and pound us over the head! And when the straight winds pass
over and the twisting winds crawl in the air like a rattlesnake in boiling
water, let's you and me holler back at it and laugh it back to where it come
from! Let's stand up on our hind legs, and shake our fists back into the
whole crazy mess, and holler and cuss and rave and laugh and say, 'Old
Cyclone, go ahead! Beat your bloody brains out against my old tough hide!
Rave on! Blow! Beat! Go crazy! Cyclone! You and I are friends! Good old
Cyclone!' "
I jumped up to my feet and hollered, "Blow! Ha! Ha! Blow, wind! Blow!
I'm a Cyclome! Ha! I'm a Cyclome!"
Papa jumped up and danced in the dirt. He circled his pile of tools,
patted me on the head, and laughed out, "Come on, Cyclone, let 'er ripple!"
"Chhaaarrrliee!" Mama's voice cut through all of the laughing and
dancing and the howling of the wind across the whole hill. "Where are you?"
"We're down here fighting with a Cyclone!" "Chasin' storms an' hittin'
'em!" I put in.
"Whhaaattt?"
Papa and me snickered at each other.
"Wrestling a Cyclone!"
"Tell 'er I am, too," I told Papa.
Grandma and Mama walked through the trash blowing in the wind and found
me and Papa patting our hands together and dancing all around the dynamite
and tools. "What on earth has come over you two?"
"Huh?"
"You're crazy!" Grandma looked around her.
The wind was filling the whole sky with a blur of dry grass, tumbling
weeds, and scooting gravel, fine dust, and sailing leaves. Hot rain began to
whip us.
"We're heading for a storm cellar, and you're coming with us. Here's a
raincoat."
"Who will carry this Sawhorse?" Papa asked them.
"I wanta wade th' water!" I said.
"No you won't. I'll carry you myself!" Mama said. "Give him to me!"
Papa joked at Mama. "Put him right up here on my shoulders! Now the raincoat
around him. We'll splash every mudhole dry between here and Oklahoma City!
We're Cyclone Fighters! Did you know that, Nora?"
The wind staggered Papa along the path. Grandma grunted and throwed her
weight against the storm. Mama was buttoning up a slicker and bogging in the
slick clay in the path.
"This rain is like a river cutting loose!" Papa was saying under my
coat. He poked his face out between two buttons and took two steps up and
slid one step back.
At the top of the hill the water was deeper, and in the dear alley the
wind hit us harder.
"Charlie! Help Grandma, there! She's fell down!'' Mama said.
Papa turned around and took Grandma by the hand and pulled her to her
feet. "I'm all right! Now! Head on for the cellar!"
I felt the wind drive against me so hard that I had to hug onto Papa's
neck as tight as I could. The wind hit us again and drove us twenty feet
down the alley in the wrong direction. Papa's shoes went over their tops in
mud and he stood spraddle-legged and panted for air. "You're choking my wind
off! Hold on around my head!"
The wind rolled tubs and spun planks of ripped lumber through the air.
Trash piles and bushel baskets sailed against clothes-line. Barn doors
banged open and shut and splintered into a hundred pieces. Rain shot like a
solid wall of water and Papa braced his feet in the soggy manure, and
yelled, "You all right, Wood?" I told him, "I'm all right! You?"
A wild push of wind whined for a minute like a puppy under a box and
then roared down the alley, squealing like a hundred mad elephants. My coat
ripped apart and turned wrongside out over my head and I grabbed a tight
hold around Papa's forehead. We staggered twenty or thirty more feet down
the alley and fell flat in some deep cow tracks behind a chicken pen.
"Charlie! Are you and Woodrow all right?" I heard Mama yelling down the
alley. I couldn't see ten feet in her direction.
"You take Grandma on to the cellar!" Papa was yelling out from under
the rubber raincoat. "We'll be there in a minute! Go on! Get in!"
I was laying at first with my feet in a hole of manurey water, but I
twisted and squirmed and finally got my head above it. "Lemme loose!"
"You keep your head down!" Papa ducked me again in the hole of watery
manure. "Stay where you are!"
"Yer drownin' me in cow manure!" I finally managed to gurgle.
"Keep down there!"
"Papa?"
"Yes. What?" He was choking for air.
"Are you and me still Cyclome Fighters?"
"We lost this first round, didn't we?" Papa laughed under the raincoat
till cellars heard him ten blocks around. "But well make it! Just as soon's
I get a little whiff of fresh air. Well make 'er here in a minute! Won't we,
manure head?"
"Mama an' Grandma's better Cyclome Fighters than we are!" I laughed and
snorted into the slush pool under my nose. "They done got to th' storm
cellar, an' left us in a 'nure hole! Ha!"
Phone wires whistled and went with the wind. Packing boxes from the
stores down in town raised from their alleys and flew above the trees.
Timbers from barns and houses clattered through windows, and cows bawled and
mooed in the yards, tangled their horns in chicken-wire fences and
clotheslines. Soggy dogs streaked and beat it for home. Ditches and streets
turned into rivers and backyards into lakes. Bales of hay splitting apart
blew through the sky like pop-corn sacks. The rain burned hot. Everything in
the world was fighting against everything in the sky. This was the hard
straight pushing that levels the towns before it and lays the path low for
the twisting, sucking, whirling tail of the cyclone to rip to shreds.
Papa wrapped me in the raincoat and hugged me as tight as he could. We
crawled behind a cow barn to duck the wind, but the cow barn screamed like a
woman run down in the streets, tumbled over on its side, and the first whisk
of the wind caught the open underside and booted the whole barn fifty feet
in the air. We fell six feet forward. I hugged around Papa's neck. He turned
me loose with both hands and swung onto a clothesline, slipping his hands
along the wires, pushing off sacks, mops, hay and rubbish of all kinds till
we got to the back of the first house. He edged his way to the next house
and felt along their clothesline. In a minute or two we come to within
fifteen feet of the cellar door where Grandma and Mama had gone with the
neighbors. Papa crawled along the ground, dragging me underneath him.
"Nora! Nora!" Papa banged against the slanting cellar door with his
fists hard enough to compete with the twister. "Let us in! It's Charlie!"
"An' meee!" I let out from under the coat.
The door opened and Papa wedged his shoulder against it. Five or six
neighbor men and women heaved against the door to push it back against the
wind.
I was just as wet as any catfish in any creek ever was or ever will be
when Papa finally got into the cellar.
Mama grabbed me up into her lap where she was setting down on a case of
canned fruit. A lantern or two shot a little gleam of light through the
shadows of ten or fifteen people packed into the cellar.
"Boy! You know, Mama, me an' Papa is really Cyclome Fighters!" I
jabbered off and shook my head around at everybody.
"How's your papa? Charlie! Are you all right?"
"Just wet with cow manure!"
Everybody laughed and hollered under the ground.
"Sing to me," I whispered to Mama.
She had already been rocking me back and forth, humming the tune to an
old song. "What do you want me to sing?"
"That. That song."
"The name of that song is 'The Sherman Cyclone.'"
"Sing that."
And so she sang it:
You could see the storm approaching
And its cloud looked deathlike black
And it was through
Our little city
That it left
Its deathly track.
And I drifted off to sleep thinking about all of the people in the
world that have worked hard and had somebody else come along and take their
life away from them.
The door was opened back and the man in a slicker was saying, "The
worst of it's gone!"
Papa yelled up the steps, "How do things look out there?"
"Pretty bad! Done a lot of damage!" I could see the man's big pair of
rubber boots sogging around in the mudhole by the door. "She passed off to
the south yonder! Hurry out, and you can still see the tail whipping!"
I jumped loose from Mama and slid down off her lap. "I'm a-gonna see it
gitt a-whippin'!" I was talking to Papa and following him out the door.
"Out south yonder. See?" The man pointed. "Still whipping!"
"I see it! I see it! That big ole long whip! I see it!" I waded out
into the holes of water barefooted and squirted mud between my toes. "I hate
you, оl' Cyclome! Git outta here!"
The clouds in the west rolled away to the south and the sun struck down
like a clear Sunday morning across town. Screen doors slammed and cellar
doors swung open. People walked out in little lines like the Lord had rung a
dinner bell. A high wind still whipped across the town. Wet hunks of trash
waved on telephone poles and wires. Scattered hay and junk of every calibre
covered the ground for as far as my eyes could travel. Kids tore out looking
for treasures. Boys and girls loped across yards and pointed and screamed at
the barns and houses wrecked. Ladies in cotton dresses splashed across
little roads to kiss each other. I watched for a block or two around and
listened to some people laugh and some people cry.
Mama walked along in front of Grandma. She didn't say much. "I'm
anxious to see over the rim of that hill," she told us "What's over it?" I
asked her.
"Nora! Grandma! Hurry up!" Papa waved from the alley where we bad been
blown off of our feet in the storm. "Here comes Roy and Clara!"
"Roy and Clara!" Grandma hustled up a little faster. "Where have they
been during all of this?"
"In th' school cellar, I suppose." Mama looked up the alley and seen
them splashing mudholes dry coming toward us.
"Why did ya stay in that оl' school cellar?" I bawled them out when
they walked up. "Me an' Papa had a fight with a cyclome twister all by
ourselfs! Ya!"
"Nora." Papa talked the quietest I had ever heard him. "Grandma. Come
here. Look. Look at the house."
We walked in a little bunch to the top rim of the hill. He pointed down
the clay path we had come up to the cellar. The sun made everything as clear
as a crystal. The air had been thrashed and had a good bath in the rain.
There we saw our old London House. Papa almost whispered, "What's left of
it."
The London House stood there without a roof. It looked like a fort that
had lost a hard battle. Rock walls partly caved in by flying wreckage and by
the push of the twister. Our back screen door jerked off of its hinges and
wrapped around the trunk of my walnut tree.
Papa got to the back door first and busted into the kitchen.
"Hello, kitchen." Mama shook her head and looked all around. "Well,
we've got a nice large sky for a roof, anyway." She saw very little of her
own furniture in the kitchen. Every single window glass was gone. Water and
mud on the floor come above our shoe tops. She turned around and picked me
up and lifted me up on the eating table, telling me, "You stay up here,
little waterbug."
"I wanta wade in th' water!" I was setting on the edge of the table
kicking my bare feet at the water in the floor. "I wanta git my feet wet!"
"There's all kinds of glass and sharp things on this floor. You might
cut your feet. Just look at that cupboard!" Mama waded across the kitchen.
The cupboard was face down and half under water. Dishes smashed in a
thousand pieces laid all around. Joints of stove pipe, brooms, mops, flour
sacks half full, aprons, coats, and pots, and pans, hay, weeds, roots, bark,
bowls with a few bites of food still in them. She pointed to a big blue
speckled pot and said, "Mister Cyclone didn't wash my pots any too clean."
"You don't seem to care much." Papa was nervous and breathing hard. He
sloshed all around the room, touching everything with his fingers and
caressing the mess of wet trash like it was a prize-winning bull, sick and
down with the colic. "Jesus! Look at everything! Look! This is the last
straw. This is our good-bye!"
"Good-bye to what?" Mama kept her eyes looking around over the house.
"What?"
Clara backed up to the eating table. "Hey, Woodblock," she said, "climb
up on my back. I'll take you for a horseback ride to the front room!''
"You children hadn't ought to be joking and playing around, not at a
time like this!" Papa cried and the tears wet his face like a baby.
"Gitty up!" I kicked Clara easy with my heels and waved my hands in the
air above her head. "Swim this big оl' kinoodlin' river! Gitty up!" I hugged
on around her neck as tight as I could while she pitched a few times and
splashed her feet in the water. Then I yelled back, "C'mon, Papa! Let's swim
th' big river, an' fight th' mean оl' hoodlum leeegion!"
"I'm coming to help fight! Wait for me!" Mama cut in splashing the
water ahead of us. She jumped up and down and splattered slush and wet flour
and mud and sooty water all over her dress and two feet or three up on the
rock walls of the kitchen. "Splash across the river! Whoopie! Splash across
the quicksand! Here we come! All of us movie stars, to fight the crooks and
stealers! Whoopie!"
"Ha! Ha! Look at Mama fightin'!" I hollered at everybody.
"Mama's a good Cyclone Fighter, too, ha?" Clara was laughing and
kicking slushy filth all over the place. "Come on, Papa! We got to go and
keep fighting this cyclone!''
Mama slid her feet through the water, sending long ripples and waves
busting against the walls. "Charlie, come on here! Look at this next room!"
Clara rode me on her back once around the whole front room. Sofa upside
down in the middle of the floor, its hair and springs scattered for fifty
feet out the south window. Papers, envelopes, pencils floated on top of the
water on the floor. The big easy chair in the corner was dropped on its side
like a fighter stopped in his tracks. Big square sandrocks from the tops of
the four walls had crashed through the upper ceiling and smashed Mama's
sewing machine against the wall. Spools of colored thread bobbed around on
top of the water like barrels and cables on the ocean.
''It didn't miss anything." Grandma looked the room over. ''I know an
Indian, Billy Bear, that swears a cyclone stole his best work horse while he
was plowing his field. He walked home mad and swearing at the world. And
when he got borne, he found the cyclone had been so good as to leave the
harness, $6.50, and a gallon crock jug of whiskey on his front doorstep!"
Everybody busted out laughing, but Papa kept quiet. "Nora, I can't
stand this any longer!" he yelled out all at once. "This funny business!
This tee-heeing. This joking! Why do all of you have to turn against me like
a pack of hounds? Isn't this, this wrecked home, this home turned into a
pile of slush and filth, this home wiped out, isn't this enough to bring you
to your senses?"
"Yes," Mama was talking low and quiet, "it has brought me to my
senses."
"You don't seem to be sorry to see the place go!"
"I'm glad." Mama stood in her tracks and breathed the fresh air down
deep in her lungs. "Yes, I feel like a new baby."
"Hey, ever'body! Ever'body! C'mere!" I walked out a bare window and
stood on the ground pointing up into the air.
"What is it?" Mama was the only one to follow me out into the yard.
"What are you pointing at?"
"Mister Cyclome broke th' top outta my walnut tree!"
"That's the one you got hung up in." Mama patted me on the head. "I
think old Mister Cyclone broke the top out of that walnut tree so you won't
get hung up there any more!"
And I held onto Mama's hand, looking at her gold wedding ring, and
telling her, "Ha! I think оl' Mister Cyclome tore down this оl' mean Lon'on
House ta keep it from hurtin' my mama!"
Chapter VI
BOOMCHASERS
We picked up and moved across town to a lot better house in a nice
neighborhood on North Ninth Street, and Papa got to buying and selling all
kinds of lands and property and making good money.
People had been slinking around corners and ducking behind bushes,
whispering and talking, and running like wild to swap and trade for
land--because tests had showed that there was a whole big ocean of oil
laying under our country. And then, one day, almost out of a clear sky, it
broke. A car shot dust in the air along the Ozark Trail. A man piled out and
waved his hands up and down Main Street running for the land office. "Oil!
She's blowed 'er top! Gusher!" And then, before long--there was a black hot
fever hit our town-- and it brought with it several whole armies, each
running the streets, and each hollering, "Oil! Flipped 'er lid! Gusher!"
They found more oil around town along the river and the creek bottoms,
and oil derricks jumped up like new groves of tall timber. Thick and black
and flying with steam, in the pastures, and above the trees, and standing in
the slushy mud of the boggy rivers, and on the rocky sides of the useless
hills, oil derricks, the wood legs and braces gummed and soaked with dusty
black blood.
Pretty soon the creeks around Okemah was filled with black scum, and
the rivers flowed with it, so that it looked like a stream of
rainbow-colored gold drifting hot along the waters. The oily film looked
pretty from the river banks and from on the bridges, and I was a right young
kid, but I remember how it came in whirls and currents, and swelled up as it
slid along down the river. It reflected every color when the sun hit just
right on it, and in the hot dry weather that is called Dog Days the fumes
rose up and you could smell them for miles and miles in every direction. It
was something big and it sort of give you a good feeling. You felt like it
was bringing some work, and some trade, and some money to everybody, and
that people everywhere, even way back up in the Eastern States was using
that oil and that gas.
Oil laid tight and close on the top of the water, and the fish couldn't
get the air they needed. They died by the wagon loads along the banks. The
weeds turned gray and tan, and never growed there any more. The tender weeds
and grass went away and all that you could see for several feet around the
edge of the oily water hole was the red dirt. The tough iron weeds and the
hard woodbrush stayed longer. They were there for several years, dead, just
standing there like they was trying to hold their breath and tough it out
till the river would get pure again, and the oil would go, and things could
breathe again. But the oil didn't go. It stayed. The grass and the trees and
the tanglewood died. The wild grape vine shriveled up and its tree died, and
the farmers pulled it down.
The Negro sharecroppers went out with their bread balls and liver for
bait. You saw them setting around the banks and on the tangled drifts, in
the middle of the day, or along about sundown--great big bunches of Negro
farmers trying to get a nibble. They worked hard. But the oil had come, and
it looked like the fish had gone. It had been an even swap.
Trains whistled into our town a hundred coaches long. Men drove their
heavy wagons by the score down to pull up alongside of the cars, and skidded
the big engines, the thick-painted, new and shiny machinery, and some old
and rusty machines from other oil fields. They unloaded the railroad cars,
and loaded and tugged a blue jillion different kinds of funny-looking
gadgets out into the fields. And then it seemed like all on one day, the
solid-tired trucks come into the country, making such a roar that it made
your back teeth rattle. Everybody was holding down one awful hard job and
two or three ordinary ones.
People told jokes:
Birds flew into town by the big long clouds, lasting two or three hours
at a time, because it was rumored around up in the sky that you could wallow
in the dust of the oiled roads and it would kill all kinds of flees and body
lice.
Dogs cured their mange, or else got it worse. Oil on their hair made
them hotter in hot weather and colder in cold weather.
Ants dug their holes deeper, but wouldn't talk any secrets about the
oil formation under the ground.
Snakes and lizards complained that wiggling through so many oil pools
made the hot sun blister their backs worse. But on the other hand they could
slide on their belly through the grass a lot easier. So it come out about
even.
Oil was more than gold ever was or ever will be, because you can't make
any hair salve or perfume, TNT, or roofing material or drive a car with just
gold. You сап`t pipe that gold back East and run them big factories, either.
The religion of the oil field, guys said, was to get all you can, and
spend all you can as quick as you can, and then end up in the can.
I'd go down to the yards and climb around over the cars loaded down
with more tools. And the sun was peppering down on all of the steel so hot,
it kept me prancing along the loads like a football player running. I heard
the tough men cuss and swear and learned more good cuss words to use to get
work done.
My head was full of pictures like a movie--different from movies I'd
been sneaking into. The faked ones about outlaws, rich girls, playboys,
cowboys and Indians, and shooting scrapes, killings, and a pretty man
kissing a pretty girl on a pretty spot on a pretty day. It takes a lot more
guts, I thought, to work and heave and cuss and sweat and laugh and talk
like the oil field workers. Every man gritted every tooth in his head, and
stretched every muscle in his whole body--not trying to get rich or rare
back and loaf, because I'd hear one beller out, "Okay, you dam guys, hit 'er
up, or else git down out of a workin' man's way, an' let me put in a Goddam
oil field!"
A block and tackle man showed me how to lift all kinds of heavy stuff
with the double pulleys, "Ride 'em down! Grab 'em down! When th'
chain goes 'round, somethin's leavin' th' ground!" There was a twenty-foot
slush bucket used for getting mud and slush out of the hole, and it looked
so heavy in a railroad car that you never could lift it out; but you'd hear
a man on a handle of a crank yell out, 'Tong bucker, tong bucker! Mister
hooker man! Grab a root, boy! Grab a root!" The man on the hooks would yell
back, "Gimme slack! Gimme slack!" Some of the cable men would guide the big
hook over to the hooker man and yell out, "Give 'im slack! Give 'im slack!"
"Take it back! Take it back! Won't do one thing you don't like!" "Take yer
slack! Bring it back!" "Ridin' with ya! Got yer grab!" "Got my grab!" "Grab
a root an' growl! Grab a root an' growl!" "Take yore grab! Take 'er home!"
The men took in all of the slack on the chain or cable and it would get as
tight as a fiddle string, and the joint of bailing bucket would raise up off
of the floor of the car and one man would yell, "She was a good gal, but she
lost her footin'!"
I piled on top a wagon every day and set on a gunny sack stuck full of
hay, by the side of a teamskinner that told me all kinds of tales and yarns
about the other ten dozen oil fields he, personally, had put down. I picked
up five or ten books full of the cuss words the mule drivers use to talk to
each other, which are somewhat worse than the ones they use to cuss their
teams into pulling harder.
Out in the fields, I walked from derrick to derrick through the trees,
and hung around each place till the driller or the tool dresser would spot
me and yell, "Git th' hell outta here, son! Too dangerous!" The bull wheels
spun and the cable unrolled as they dropped the mud buckets down into the
hole; the boiler shot steam and danced on its foundation; the derrick shook
"Sounds like a car motor," I said.
"She ain't got no car motor in 'er," he said.
"Might," I said.
"I don't much think she has, though."
"Might have a little 'un, kinda like a cat motor; I mean a regler
little motor fer cats," I said.
"What'd she be wantin' with a cat motor?"
"Lotsa things is got motors in 'em. Motors is engines. Engines makes
things go. Makes noise jest like ol' mama cat. Motor makes wheels go 'round,
so cats might have a real little motor ta make legs go, an' tail go, an'
feet move, an' nose go, an' ears wiggle, an' eyes go 'round, an' mouth fly
open, an' mebbe her stomach is' er gas tank." I was running my hand along
over the old mama cat's fur, feeling of each part as I talked, head, tail,
legs, mouth, eyes, and stomach; and the old cat had a big smile on her face.
"Wanta see if she's really got a motor inside of 'er? I'll go an' git
Ma's butcher knife, an' you hold 'er legs, an' I'll cut er belly open; an'
if she's got a motor in 'er, by jacks, I wanta see it! Want me to?" Lawrence
asked me.
"Cut 'er belly open?" I asked him. "Ya might'n find 'er motor when ya
got cut in there!"
"I c'n find it, if she's got one down in there! I helped Pa cut rabbits
an' squirrels an' fishes open, an' I never did see no motor in them!"
"No, but did you ever hear a rabbit er a squirrel either one, or a fish
make a noise like mama cat makes?"
"No. Never did."
"Well, mebbe that's why they ain't got no motor. Mebbe they gotta
differnt kinda motor. Don't make no kind of a noise."
"Might be. An' some of th' time mama cat don't make no noise either;
'cause some of th' time ya cain't even hear no motor in 'er belly. What
then?"
"Maybe she's just got th' key turned off!"
"Turned off?" Lawrence asked me.
"Might be. My papa's gotta car. His car's gotta key. Ya turn th' key
on, an' th' car goes like a cat. Ya turn th' key off, an' it quits."
'There yore hand goes ag'in! Didn' I tell you not ta touch them little
baby kittens? They ain't got no eyes open ta see with yet; you cain't put
yore hands on' em!" He cut his eyes around at me.
"Ohhhhhppppp! All right. I'm awful, awful sorry, mama cat; an' I'm
awful, awful sorry, little baby cats!" And I let my hand fall back down on
the old mama cat's back.
"That's all right ta pat 'er all you want, but she'll reach up an" take
'er claws, an' rip yore hand plumb wide open if you make one of her little
cats cry!" he told me.
"Know somethin', Lawrence, know somethin'?"
"What about?" he asked me.
"People says when I wuz a baby, jest like one of these here little baby
cats, only a little bit bigger, mebbe, my mama got awful bad sick when I wuz
borned under th' covers."
"I heard Ma an' them talk about her," he told me.
"What did they talk about?" I asked him.
"Oohhh, I dunno, she wuz purty bad off.''
"What made 'er bad off?"
"Yer dad."
"My papa did?"
"What people says."
"He's good ta me. Good ta my mama. What makes people say he made my
mama git sick?"
"Politics."
"What's them?''
"I dunno what politics is. Just a good way to make some money. But you
always have troubles. Have fights. Carry two guns ever' day. Yore dad likes
lots of money. So he got some people ta vote fer 'im, so then he got 'im two
guns an' went around c'lectin' money. Yore ma didn't like yore dad ta always
be pokin' guns, shootin', fightin', an' so, well, she just worried an'
worried, till she got sick at it--an' that was when you was borned a baby
not much bigger'n one of these here little cats, I reckon.'' Lawrence was
digging his fingernails into the soft white pine of the box, looking at the
nest of cats. "Funny thing 'bout cats. All of 'em's got one ma, an' all of
'ems differnt colors. Which is yore pet color? Mine's this 'un, an' this
'un, an' this 'un."
"I like all colors cats. Say, Lawrence, what does crazy mean?"
"Means you ain't got good sense.''
"Worried?"
"Crazy's more'n just worry."
"Worse'n worryin'?"
"Shore. Worry starts, an' you do that fer a long, long time, an' then
maybe you git sick 'er somethin', an' ya go all, well, you just git all
mixed up 'bout ever'thing."
"Is ever'body sick like my mama?"
"I don't guess."
"Reckin could all of our folks cure my mama?"
"Might. Wonder how?"
"If ever single livin' one of 'em would all git together an' git rid of
them ol' mean, bad politics, they'd all feel lots better, an' wouldn't fight
each other so much, an' that'd make my mama feel better."
Lawrence looked out through the leaves of the bushes. "Wonder where
Warren's headin', goin' off down toward th' barn? Be right still; he's
walkin' past us. He'll hear us talkin'."
I whispered real low and asked Lawrence, "Whatcha bein' so still for?
'Fraida Warren?"
And Lawrence told me, "Hushhh. Naw. 'Fraid fer th' cats."
"Why 'bоut th' cats?"
"Warren don't like cats."
"Why?" I was still whispering.
"Just don't. Be still. Ssshhh."
"Why?" I went on.
"Sez cats ain't no good. Warren kills all th' new little baby cats that
gits born'd on th' place. I had these hid out under th' barn. Don't let 'im
know we're here...."
Warren got within about twenty feet of us, and we could see his long
shadow falling over our rosebush; and then for a little time we couldn't see
him, and the rosebush blocked out of sight of him. Still, we could hear his
new sharp-toed leather shoes screaking every time he took a step. Lawrence
tapped me on the shoulder. I looked around and he was motioning for me to
grab up one side of the white pine box. I got a hold and he grabbed the
other side. We skidded the box up close to the rock foundation of the house,
and partly in behind the rosebush.
Lawrence held his breath and I held my hand over my mouth. Warren's
screaky shoes was the only sound I could hear. Lawrence laid his body down
over the box of cats. I laid down to hide the other half of the box, and the
screak, screak, screak got louder. I whiffed my nose and smelled the loud
whang of hair tonic on Warren's hair. His white silk shirt threw flashes of
white light through the limbs of the roses, and Lawrence moved his lips so
as to barely say, "Montgomery girl." I didn't catch him the first time, so
he puckered his lips to tell me again, and when he bent over my way, he
stuck a thorn into his shoulder, and talked out too loud:
"Montgomery--"
The screak of Warren's shoes stopped by the side of the bush. He looked
all around, and took a step back, then one forward. And he had us trapped.
I didn't have the guts to look up at him. I heard his shoes screak and
I knew that he was rocking from one foot to the other one, standing with his
hands on his hips, looking down on the ground at Lawrence and me. I shivered
and could feel Lawrence quiver under his shirt. Then I turned my head over
and looked out from under Lawrence's arm, both of us still hugging the box,
and heard Warren say, "What was that you boys was a-sayin'?"
"Tellin' Woody about somebody," Lawrence told Warren.
"Somebody? Who?" Warren didn't seem to be in any big rush.
"Somebody. Somebody you know," Lawrence said.
"Who do I know?" Warren asked him.
"Th' Mon'gom'ry folks,'' Lawrence said.
"You're a couple of dirty little low-down liars! All you know how to do
is to hide off in under some Goddamed bush, an' say silly things about other
decent people!" Warren told us.
"We wuzn't makin' no fun, swear ta God," Lawrence told him.
"What in the hell was you layin' under there talkin' about? Somethin'
your're tryin' to hide! Talk out!"
"I seen you was all nice an' warshed up clean, an' told Woody you was
goin' over ta Mon'gom'ry's place.''
"What else?"
"Nuthin else. 'At's all I said, swear ta God, all I told you, wasn't
it, Woody?"
" 'S all I heard ya say," I told him.
"Now ain't you a pair of little old yappin' pups? You know dam good an'
well you was teasin' me from behind 'bout Lola Montgomery! How come you two
hidin' here in th' first place? Just to see me walk past you with all of my
clean clothes on? See them new low-cut shoes? See how sharp th' toes are?
Feel with your finger, both of you, feel! That's it! See how sharp? I'd
ought to just take that sharp toe and kick both of your little rears."
"Quit! Quit that pushin' me!" Lawrence was yelling as loud as he could,
hoping Grandma would hear. Warren pushed him on the shoulder with the bottom
of his shoe, and tried to roll Lawrence over across the ground. Lawrence
swung onto his box of cats so tight that Warren had to kick as hard as he
could, and push Lawrence off the box.
The only thing I could think of to do was jump on top of the box and
cover it up. Lawrence was yelling as loud as he could yell. Warren was
laughing. I wasn't saying anything.
"Whut's that box you're a holdin' onto there so tight?" Warren asked
me.
"Jest a plain ol' box!" Lawrence was crying and talking.
"Jest a plain wooden box," I told Warren.
"What's on th' inside of it, runts?"
"Nuthin's in it!"
"Jist a ol' empty one!"
And Warren put his shoe sole on my back and pushed me over beside
Lawrence. "I'll just take me a look! You two seems mighty interested in
what's inside of that box!"
"You оl' mean outfit, you! God, I hate you! You go on over an' see yore
ol' 'Gomery girl, an' leave us alone! We ain't a-hurtin' you!" Lawrence was
jumping up. He started to draw back and fight Warren, but Warren just took
his open hand and pushed Lawrence about fifteen feet backwards, and he fell
flat, screaming.
Warren put his foot on my shoulder and give me another shove. I went
about three feet. I tried to hold onto the box, but the whole works turned
over. The old mama cat jumped out and made a circle around us, meowing first
at Warren, and then at me and the little baby kittens cried in the split
cotton seed.
"Cat lovers!" Warren told us.
"You g'wan, an' let us be! Don't you tech them cats! Ma! Ma! Warr'n's
gonna hurt our cats!" Lawrence squawled out.
Warren kicked the loose cotton seed apart. "Just like
tearin' up a bird's nest!" he said. He put the sharp toe of his
shoe under the belly of the first little cat, and threw it up against the
rock foundation. "Meoww! Meoww! You little chicken killers! Egg stealers!"
He picked the second kitten up in the grip of his hand, and squeezed till
his muscles bulged up. He swung the kitten around and around, something like
a Ferris wheel, as fast as he could turn his arm, and the blood and entrails
of the kitten splashed across the ground, and the side of the house. Then he
held the little body out toward Lawrence and me. We looked at it, and it was
just like an empty hide. He threw it away out over the fence.
Warren took the second kitten, squeezed it, swung it over his head and
over the top wire of the fence. The third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and
seventh.
The poor old mama cat was running backwards, crossways, and all around
over the yard with her back humped up, begging against Warren's legs, and
trying to jump up and climb up his body to help her babies. He boxed her
away and she came back. He kicked her thirty feet. She moaned along the
rocks, smelling of her babies' blood and insides. She scratched dirt and dug
grass roots; then she made a screaming noise that chilled my blood and
jumped six feet, clawing at Warren's arm. He kicked her in the air and her
sides were broke and caved in. He booted her up against the side of the
house, and she laid there wagging her tail and meowing; and Warren grabbed
the box and splintered it against the rocks and the mama cat's head. He
grabbed up two rocks and hit her in the stomach both shots. He looked at me
and Lawrence, spit on us, threw the loose cotton seed into our faces, and
said, "Cat-lovin' bastards!" And he started walking on away toward the barn.
"You ain't no flesh an' blood of mine!" Lawrence cried after him.
"Hell with you, baby britches! Hell with you. I don't even want to be
yore dam brother!" Warren said over his shoulder.
"You ain't my uncle, neither," I told him, "not even my mama's half
brother! You ain't even nobody's halfway brother! I'm glad my mama ain't no
kin ta you! I'm glad I ain't!" I told him.
"Awwww. Whattaya know, whattaya know, you half-starved little runt?"
Warren was turned around, standing in the late sun with his shirt white and
pretty in the wind. "You done run yore mama crazy just bein' born! You
little old hard-luck bringer! You dam little old insane-asylum baby!" And
Warren walked away on down to the barn.
Then Lawrence rolled up onto his feet off of the grass and tore around
the side of the house hollering and telling Grandma what all Warren had done
to the cats.
I scrambled up over the fence and dropped down into the short-weed
patch. The old mama cat was twisting and moaning and squeezing through at
the bottom of the wire, and making her way out where Warren had slung her
little babies.
I saw the old mama walk around and around her first kitten in the
weeds, and sniffle, and smell, and lick the little hairs; then she took the
dead baby in her teeth, carried it through the weeds, the rag weeds,
gypsums, and cuckle burrs that are a part of all of Oklahoma.
She laid the baby down when she come to the edge of a little trickling
creek, and held up her own broken feet when she walked around the kitten
again, circling, looking down at it, and back up at me.
I got down on my hands and knees and tried to reach out and pet her.
She was so broke up and hurting that she couldn't stand still, and she
pounded the damp ground there with her tail as she walked a whole circle all
around me. I took my hand and dug a little hole in the sandy creek bank and
laid the dead baby in, and covered it up with a mound like a grave.
When I seen the old Mama Maltese holding her eyes shut with the lids
quivering and smell away into the air, I knew she was on the scent of her
second one.
When she brought it in, I dug the second little grave.
I was listening to her moan and choke in the weeds, dragging her belly
along the ground, with her two back legs limber behind her, pulling her body
with her front feet, and throwing her head first to one side and then to the
other.
And I was thinking: Is that what crazy is?
Chapter V
MISTER CYCLOME
"Here I am, Papa!" I ripped out the east door and went running down to
where Papa was. "Here I am! I wanta help shoot!"
"Get back away from that hole! Dynamite!" He hadn't noticed me as I
trotted out.
"Where 'bouts?" I was standing not more than three feet away from the
hole he'd been drilling through a rock' "Where?"
"Run! This way!" He grabbed me in his arms, covered me over with his
jacket and fell down flat against the ground, "Lay still! Down!"
The whole hill jarred. Rocks howled out over our heads.
"I wanna see!" I was trying to fight my way out from under him. "Lemme
out!"
"Keep down!" He hugged his jacket around me that much tighter. "Those
rocks just went up. They'll be down in a jiffy!"
I felt him duck his head down against mine. The rocks thumped all
around us and several peppered the jacket. The cloth was stretched tight. It
sounded like a war drum. "Wowie!" I said to Papa.
"You'll think, Wowie!" Papa laughed when he got up. He brushed his
clothes off good. "One of those rocks hit you on the head, and you wouldn't
think anything for a long time!"
"Le's go blow another'n up!" I was pacing around like a cat wanting
milk.
"All right! Come on! You can take the little hoe and dig a nice
ten-foot hole!"
"Goshamighty! How deep?"
"Teen feet."
"Lickety split! Lickety split!" I was chopping out a hole with the
little hoe. "Is this 'teen feet deep?"
"Keep on with your work!" Papa acted like a chain-gang boss. "Whew! I
don't believe I ever did see it get so hot this late in the stimmer. But I
guess we'll have to keep digging without air! We've just got to get this old
London Place fixed up. Then we can sell it to somebody and get some money
and buy us another better place. You like that?"
"I don't like nuthin' bad. I wanta move. Mama wants ta move, too. So
does Roy an' Clara, an' ever'body else."
"Yes, little boy, I know, I know."' Papa knocked the blue
rock smoke out of the hole every time his crowbar come down. "I like
everything that's good, don't you?"
"Mama had a piano an' lotsa good things when she was a little kid,
didn't she?" I kept leaning on the handle of my hoe. "An" now she ain't got
no nice things."
"Yes. She always loved the good things." Papa pulled a red bandana out
of his hip pocket and wiped the sweat from his face. "You know, Woody boy,
I'm afraid."
"'Fraida what?"
"This infernal heat. It's got me guessing." Papa looked all around in
every direction, sniffed in the air. "Don't know exactly. But it feels like
to me there's not a single breath of air stirring."
"Purty still, all right. I'm sweatin'!"
"Not a leaf. Not a blade of grass. Not a feather. Not a spider-web
stirring." He turned his face away to the north. A quick, fast breath of
cool air drifted across the hill.
"Good оl' cool wind!" I was puffing my lungs full of the new air
stirring. "Good ol', good оl', cool, cool wind!"
"Yes, I feel the cool wind." He stayed down on his hands, looking
everywhere, listening to every little sound. "And I don't like it!" He
yelled at me. "And you hadn't ought to say that you like it, either!"
"Papa, what'sa matter, huh?" I laid on my belly as close up beside Papa
as I could get, and looked everywhere that he did. "Papers an' leafs an'
feathers blowin'. You ain't really scared, are ya, Papa?"
Papa's voice sounded shaky and worried. "What do you know about
cyclones? You've never even seen one yet! Quit popping off at your mouth!
Everything that I've been working and fighting for in my whole life is tied
up right here in this old London Place!"
I never thought that I would see my dad so afraid of anything.
" 'Taint no good!"
"Shut your little mouth before I shut it for you!"
" 'Tain't no good!"
"Don't you dare talk back to your papa!"
" 'Tain't no good!"
"Woody, I'll split you hide!" Then he let his head drop down till his
chin touched the bib of his overhalls and his tears wet the watch pocket.
"What makes you say it's not any good, Woody?"
"Mama said it." I rolled a foot or two away from him. An' Mama cries
alla th' time, too!"
The wind rustled against the limbs of the locust trees across the road
running up the hill. The walnut trees frisked their heads in the air and
snorted at the wind getting harder. I heard a low whining sound everywhere
in the air as the spider webs, feathers, old flying papers, and dark clouds
swept along the ground, picking up the dust, and blocking out the sky.
Everything fought and pushed against the wind, and the wind fought
everything in its way.
"Woody, little boy, come over here."
"I'm a-gonna run." I stood up and looked toward the house.
"No, don't run." I had to stand extra still and quiet to hear Papa talk
in the wind. "Don't run. Don't ever run. Come on over here and let me hold
you on my lap."
I felt a feeling of some kind come over me like the chilly winds coming
over the hot hill. I turned nervous and scared and almost sick inside. I
fell down into Papa's lap, hugging him around the neck so tight his whiskers
rubbed my face nearly raw. I could feel his heart beating fast and I knew he
was afraid.
"Le's run!"
"You know, I'm not ever going to run any more, Woody, Not from people.
Not from my own self. Not from a cyclone."
"Not even from a lightnin' rod?"
"You mean a bolt of lightning? No. Not even from a streak of
lightning!"
"Thunner? `Tater wagon?"
"Not from thunder. Not from my own fear.''
"Skeerd?"
"Yes. I'm scared. I'm shaking right this minute."
"I felt ya shakin' when th' cyclome first come."
"Cyclone may miss us, little curly block. Then again, it may hit right
square on top of us. I just want to ask you a question. What if this cyclone
was to reach down with its mean tail and suck away everything we've got here
on this hill? Would you still like your old Papa? Would you still come over
and sit on my lap and hold me this tight around the neck?"
"I'd hug tighter."
"That's all I want to know." He straightened up a little and put both
arms around me so that when the wind blew colder I felt warmer. "Let's let
the wind get harder. Let's let the straw and the feathers fly! Let the old
wind go crazy and pound us over the head! And when the straight winds pass
over and the twisting winds crawl in the air like a rattlesnake in boiling
water, let's you and me holler back at it and laugh it back to where it come
from! Let's stand up on our hind legs, and shake our fists back into the
whole crazy mess, and holler and cuss and rave and laugh and say, 'Old
Cyclone, go ahead! Beat your bloody brains out against my old tough hide!
Rave on! Blow! Beat! Go crazy! Cyclone! You and I are friends! Good old
Cyclone!' "
I jumped up to my feet and hollered, "Blow! Ha! Ha! Blow, wind! Blow!
I'm a Cyclome! Ha! I'm a Cyclome!"
Papa jumped up and danced in the dirt. He circled his pile of tools,
patted me on the head, and laughed out, "Come on, Cyclone, let 'er ripple!"
"Chhaaarrrliee!" Mama's voice cut through all of the laughing and
dancing and the howling of the wind across the whole hill. "Where are you?"
"We're down here fighting with a Cyclone!" "Chasin' storms an' hittin'
'em!" I put in.
"Whhaaattt?"
Papa and me snickered at each other.
"Wrestling a Cyclone!"
"Tell 'er I am, too," I told Papa.
Grandma and Mama walked through the trash blowing in the wind and found
me and Papa patting our hands together and dancing all around the dynamite
and tools. "What on earth has come over you two?"
"Huh?"
"You're crazy!" Grandma looked around her.
The wind was filling the whole sky with a blur of dry grass, tumbling
weeds, and scooting gravel, fine dust, and sailing leaves. Hot rain began to
whip us.
"We're heading for a storm cellar, and you're coming with us. Here's a
raincoat."
"Who will carry this Sawhorse?" Papa asked them.
"I wanta wade th' water!" I said.
"No you won't. I'll carry you myself!" Mama said. "Give him to me!"
Papa joked at Mama. "Put him right up here on my shoulders! Now the raincoat
around him. We'll splash every mudhole dry between here and Oklahoma City!
We're Cyclone Fighters! Did you know that, Nora?"
The wind staggered Papa along the path. Grandma grunted and throwed her
weight against the storm. Mama was buttoning up a slicker and bogging in the
slick clay in the path.
"This rain is like a river cutting loose!" Papa was saying under my
coat. He poked his face out between two buttons and took two steps up and
slid one step back.
At the top of the hill the water was deeper, and in the dear alley the
wind hit us harder.
"Charlie! Help Grandma, there! She's fell down!'' Mama said.
Papa turned around and took Grandma by the hand and pulled her to her
feet. "I'm all right! Now! Head on for the cellar!"
I felt the wind drive against me so hard that I had to hug onto Papa's
neck as tight as I could. The wind hit us again and drove us twenty feet
down the alley in the wrong direction. Papa's shoes went over their tops in
mud and he stood spraddle-legged and panted for air. "You're choking my wind
off! Hold on around my head!"
The wind rolled tubs and spun planks of ripped lumber through the air.
Trash piles and bushel baskets sailed against clothes-line. Barn doors
banged open and shut and splintered into a hundred pieces. Rain shot like a
solid wall of water and Papa braced his feet in the soggy manure, and
yelled, "You all right, Wood?" I told him, "I'm all right! You?"
A wild push of wind whined for a minute like a puppy under a box and
then roared down the alley, squealing like a hundred mad elephants. My coat
ripped apart and turned wrongside out over my head and I grabbed a tight
hold around Papa's forehead. We staggered twenty or thirty more feet down
the alley and fell flat in some deep cow tracks behind a chicken pen.
"Charlie! Are you and Woodrow all right?" I heard Mama yelling down the
alley. I couldn't see ten feet in her direction.
"You take Grandma on to the cellar!" Papa was yelling out from under
the rubber raincoat. "We'll be there in a minute! Go on! Get in!"
I was laying at first with my feet in a hole of manurey water, but I
twisted and squirmed and finally got my head above it. "Lemme loose!"
"You keep your head down!" Papa ducked me again in the hole of watery
manure. "Stay where you are!"
"Yer drownin' me in cow manure!" I finally managed to gurgle.
"Keep down there!"
"Papa?"
"Yes. What?" He was choking for air.
"Are you and me still Cyclome Fighters?"
"We lost this first round, didn't we?" Papa laughed under the raincoat
till cellars heard him ten blocks around. "But well make it! Just as soon's
I get a little whiff of fresh air. Well make 'er here in a minute! Won't we,
manure head?"
"Mama an' Grandma's better Cyclome Fighters than we are!" I laughed and
snorted into the slush pool under my nose. "They done got to th' storm
cellar, an' left us in a 'nure hole! Ha!"
Phone wires whistled and went with the wind. Packing boxes from the
stores down in town raised from their alleys and flew above the trees.
Timbers from barns and houses clattered through windows, and cows bawled and
mooed in the yards, tangled their horns in chicken-wire fences and
clotheslines. Soggy dogs streaked and beat it for home. Ditches and streets
turned into rivers and backyards into lakes. Bales of hay splitting apart
blew through the sky like pop-corn sacks. The rain burned hot. Everything in
the world was fighting against everything in the sky. This was the hard
straight pushing that levels the towns before it and lays the path low for
the twisting, sucking, whirling tail of the cyclone to rip to shreds.
Papa wrapped me in the raincoat and hugged me as tight as he could. We
crawled behind a cow barn to duck the wind, but the cow barn screamed like a
woman run down in the streets, tumbled over on its side, and the first whisk
of the wind caught the open underside and booted the whole barn fifty feet
in the air. We fell six feet forward. I hugged around Papa's neck. He turned
me loose with both hands and swung onto a clothesline, slipping his hands
along the wires, pushing off sacks, mops, hay and rubbish of all kinds till
we got to the back of the first house. He edged his way to the next house
and felt along their clothesline. In a minute or two we come to within
fifteen feet of the cellar door where Grandma and Mama had gone with the
neighbors. Papa crawled along the ground, dragging me underneath him.
"Nora! Nora!" Papa banged against the slanting cellar door with his
fists hard enough to compete with the twister. "Let us in! It's Charlie!"
"An' meee!" I let out from under the coat.
The door opened and Papa wedged his shoulder against it. Five or six
neighbor men and women heaved against the door to push it back against the
wind.
I was just as wet as any catfish in any creek ever was or ever will be
when Papa finally got into the cellar.
Mama grabbed me up into her lap where she was setting down on a case of
canned fruit. A lantern or two shot a little gleam of light through the
shadows of ten or fifteen people packed into the cellar.
"Boy! You know, Mama, me an' Papa is really Cyclome Fighters!" I
jabbered off and shook my head around at everybody.
"How's your papa? Charlie! Are you all right?"
"Just wet with cow manure!"
Everybody laughed and hollered under the ground.
"Sing to me," I whispered to Mama.
She had already been rocking me back and forth, humming the tune to an
old song. "What do you want me to sing?"
"That. That song."
"The name of that song is 'The Sherman Cyclone.'"
"Sing that."
And so she sang it:
You could see the storm approaching
And its cloud looked deathlike black
And it was through
Our little city
That it left
Its deathly track.
And I drifted off to sleep thinking about all of the people in the
world that have worked hard and had somebody else come along and take their
life away from them.
The door was opened back and the man in a slicker was saying, "The
worst of it's gone!"
Papa yelled up the steps, "How do things look out there?"
"Pretty bad! Done a lot of damage!" I could see the man's big pair of
rubber boots sogging around in the mudhole by the door. "She passed off to
the south yonder! Hurry out, and you can still see the tail whipping!"
I jumped loose from Mama and slid down off her lap. "I'm a-gonna see it
gitt a-whippin'!" I was talking to Papa and following him out the door.
"Out south yonder. See?" The man pointed. "Still whipping!"
"I see it! I see it! That big ole long whip! I see it!" I waded out
into the holes of water barefooted and squirted mud between my toes. "I hate
you, оl' Cyclome! Git outta here!"
The clouds in the west rolled away to the south and the sun struck down
like a clear Sunday morning across town. Screen doors slammed and cellar
doors swung open. People walked out in little lines like the Lord had rung a
dinner bell. A high wind still whipped across the town. Wet hunks of trash
waved on telephone poles and wires. Scattered hay and junk of every calibre
covered the ground for as far as my eyes could travel. Kids tore out looking
for treasures. Boys and girls loped across yards and pointed and screamed at
the barns and houses wrecked. Ladies in cotton dresses splashed across
little roads to kiss each other. I watched for a block or two around and
listened to some people laugh and some people cry.
Mama walked along in front of Grandma. She didn't say much. "I'm
anxious to see over the rim of that hill," she told us "What's over it?" I
asked her.
"Nora! Grandma! Hurry up!" Papa waved from the alley where we bad been
blown off of our feet in the storm. "Here comes Roy and Clara!"
"Roy and Clara!" Grandma hustled up a little faster. "Where have they
been during all of this?"
"In th' school cellar, I suppose." Mama looked up the alley and seen
them splashing mudholes dry coming toward us.
"Why did ya stay in that оl' school cellar?" I bawled them out when
they walked up. "Me an' Papa had a fight with a cyclome twister all by
ourselfs! Ya!"
"Nora." Papa talked the quietest I had ever heard him. "Grandma. Come
here. Look. Look at the house."
We walked in a little bunch to the top rim of the hill. He pointed down
the clay path we had come up to the cellar. The sun made everything as clear
as a crystal. The air had been thrashed and had a good bath in the rain.
There we saw our old London House. Papa almost whispered, "What's left of
it."
The London House stood there without a roof. It looked like a fort that
had lost a hard battle. Rock walls partly caved in by flying wreckage and by
the push of the twister. Our back screen door jerked off of its hinges and
wrapped around the trunk of my walnut tree.
Papa got to the back door first and busted into the kitchen.
"Hello, kitchen." Mama shook her head and looked all around. "Well,
we've got a nice large sky for a roof, anyway." She saw very little of her
own furniture in the kitchen. Every single window glass was gone. Water and
mud on the floor come above our shoe tops. She turned around and picked me
up and lifted me up on the eating table, telling me, "You stay up here,
little waterbug."
"I wanta wade in th' water!" I was setting on the edge of the table
kicking my bare feet at the water in the floor. "I wanta git my feet wet!"
"There's all kinds of glass and sharp things on this floor. You might
cut your feet. Just look at that cupboard!" Mama waded across the kitchen.
The cupboard was face down and half under water. Dishes smashed in a
thousand pieces laid all around. Joints of stove pipe, brooms, mops, flour
sacks half full, aprons, coats, and pots, and pans, hay, weeds, roots, bark,
bowls with a few bites of food still in them. She pointed to a big blue
speckled pot and said, "Mister Cyclone didn't wash my pots any too clean."
"You don't seem to care much." Papa was nervous and breathing hard. He
sloshed all around the room, touching everything with his fingers and
caressing the mess of wet trash like it was a prize-winning bull, sick and
down with the colic. "Jesus! Look at everything! Look! This is the last
straw. This is our good-bye!"
"Good-bye to what?" Mama kept her eyes looking around over the house.
"What?"
Clara backed up to the eating table. "Hey, Woodblock," she said, "climb
up on my back. I'll take you for a horseback ride to the front room!''
"You children hadn't ought to be joking and playing around, not at a
time like this!" Papa cried and the tears wet his face like a baby.
"Gitty up!" I kicked Clara easy with my heels and waved my hands in the
air above her head. "Swim this big оl' kinoodlin' river! Gitty up!" I hugged
on around her neck as tight as I could while she pitched a few times and
splashed her feet in the water. Then I yelled back, "C'mon, Papa! Let's swim
th' big river, an' fight th' mean оl' hoodlum leeegion!"
"I'm coming to help fight! Wait for me!" Mama cut in splashing the
water ahead of us. She jumped up and down and splattered slush and wet flour
and mud and sooty water all over her dress and two feet or three up on the
rock walls of the kitchen. "Splash across the river! Whoopie! Splash across
the quicksand! Here we come! All of us movie stars, to fight the crooks and
stealers! Whoopie!"
"Ha! Ha! Look at Mama fightin'!" I hollered at everybody.
"Mama's a good Cyclone Fighter, too, ha?" Clara was laughing and
kicking slushy filth all over the place. "Come on, Papa! We got to go and
keep fighting this cyclone!''
Mama slid her feet through the water, sending long ripples and waves
busting against the walls. "Charlie, come on here! Look at this next room!"
Clara rode me on her back once around the whole front room. Sofa upside
down in the middle of the floor, its hair and springs scattered for fifty
feet out the south window. Papers, envelopes, pencils floated on top of the
water on the floor. The big easy chair in the corner was dropped on its side
like a fighter stopped in his tracks. Big square sandrocks from the tops of
the four walls had crashed through the upper ceiling and smashed Mama's
sewing machine against the wall. Spools of colored thread bobbed around on
top of the water like barrels and cables on the ocean.
''It didn't miss anything." Grandma looked the room over. ''I know an
Indian, Billy Bear, that swears a cyclone stole his best work horse while he
was plowing his field. He walked home mad and swearing at the world. And
when he got borne, he found the cyclone had been so good as to leave the
harness, $6.50, and a gallon crock jug of whiskey on his front doorstep!"
Everybody busted out laughing, but Papa kept quiet. "Nora, I can't
stand this any longer!" he yelled out all at once. "This funny business!
This tee-heeing. This joking! Why do all of you have to turn against me like
a pack of hounds? Isn't this, this wrecked home, this home turned into a
pile of slush and filth, this home wiped out, isn't this enough to bring you
to your senses?"
"Yes," Mama was talking low and quiet, "it has brought me to my
senses."
"You don't seem to be sorry to see the place go!"
"I'm glad." Mama stood in her tracks and breathed the fresh air down
deep in her lungs. "Yes, I feel like a new baby."
"Hey, ever'body! Ever'body! C'mere!" I walked out a bare window and
stood on the ground pointing up into the air.
"What is it?" Mama was the only one to follow me out into the yard.
"What are you pointing at?"
"Mister Cyclome broke th' top outta my walnut tree!"
"That's the one you got hung up in." Mama patted me on the head. "I
think old Mister Cyclone broke the top out of that walnut tree so you won't
get hung up there any more!"
And I held onto Mama's hand, looking at her gold wedding ring, and
telling her, "Ha! I think оl' Mister Cyclome tore down this оl' mean Lon'on
House ta keep it from hurtin' my mama!"
Chapter VI
BOOMCHASERS
We picked up and moved across town to a lot better house in a nice
neighborhood on North Ninth Street, and Papa got to buying and selling all
kinds of lands and property and making good money.
People had been slinking around corners and ducking behind bushes,
whispering and talking, and running like wild to swap and trade for
land--because tests had showed that there was a whole big ocean of oil
laying under our country. And then, one day, almost out of a clear sky, it
broke. A car shot dust in the air along the Ozark Trail. A man piled out and
waved his hands up and down Main Street running for the land office. "Oil!
She's blowed 'er top! Gusher!" And then, before long--there was a black hot
fever hit our town-- and it brought with it several whole armies, each
running the streets, and each hollering, "Oil! Flipped 'er lid! Gusher!"
They found more oil around town along the river and the creek bottoms,
and oil derricks jumped up like new groves of tall timber. Thick and black
and flying with steam, in the pastures, and above the trees, and standing in
the slushy mud of the boggy rivers, and on the rocky sides of the useless
hills, oil derricks, the wood legs and braces gummed and soaked with dusty
black blood.
Pretty soon the creeks around Okemah was filled with black scum, and
the rivers flowed with it, so that it looked like a stream of
rainbow-colored gold drifting hot along the waters. The oily film looked
pretty from the river banks and from on the bridges, and I was a right young
kid, but I remember how it came in whirls and currents, and swelled up as it
slid along down the river. It reflected every color when the sun hit just
right on it, and in the hot dry weather that is called Dog Days the fumes
rose up and you could smell them for miles and miles in every direction. It
was something big and it sort of give you a good feeling. You felt like it
was bringing some work, and some trade, and some money to everybody, and
that people everywhere, even way back up in the Eastern States was using
that oil and that gas.
Oil laid tight and close on the top of the water, and the fish couldn't
get the air they needed. They died by the wagon loads along the banks. The
weeds turned gray and tan, and never growed there any more. The tender weeds
and grass went away and all that you could see for several feet around the
edge of the oily water hole was the red dirt. The tough iron weeds and the
hard woodbrush stayed longer. They were there for several years, dead, just
standing there like they was trying to hold their breath and tough it out
till the river would get pure again, and the oil would go, and things could
breathe again. But the oil didn't go. It stayed. The grass and the trees and
the tanglewood died. The wild grape vine shriveled up and its tree died, and
the farmers pulled it down.
The Negro sharecroppers went out with their bread balls and liver for
bait. You saw them setting around the banks and on the tangled drifts, in
the middle of the day, or along about sundown--great big bunches of Negro
farmers trying to get a nibble. They worked hard. But the oil had come, and
it looked like the fish had gone. It had been an even swap.
Trains whistled into our town a hundred coaches long. Men drove their
heavy wagons by the score down to pull up alongside of the cars, and skidded
the big engines, the thick-painted, new and shiny machinery, and some old
and rusty machines from other oil fields. They unloaded the railroad cars,
and loaded and tugged a blue jillion different kinds of funny-looking
gadgets out into the fields. And then it seemed like all on one day, the
solid-tired trucks come into the country, making such a roar that it made
your back teeth rattle. Everybody was holding down one awful hard job and
two or three ordinary ones.
People told jokes:
Birds flew into town by the big long clouds, lasting two or three hours
at a time, because it was rumored around up in the sky that you could wallow
in the dust of the oiled roads and it would kill all kinds of flees and body
lice.
Dogs cured their mange, or else got it worse. Oil on their hair made
them hotter in hot weather and colder in cold weather.
Ants dug their holes deeper, but wouldn't talk any secrets about the
oil formation under the ground.
Snakes and lizards complained that wiggling through so many oil pools
made the hot sun blister their backs worse. But on the other hand they could
slide on their belly through the grass a lot easier. So it come out about
even.
Oil was more than gold ever was or ever will be, because you can't make
any hair salve or perfume, TNT, or roofing material or drive a car with just
gold. You сап`t pipe that gold back East and run them big factories, either.
The religion of the oil field, guys said, was to get all you can, and
spend all you can as quick as you can, and then end up in the can.
I'd go down to the yards and climb around over the cars loaded down
with more tools. And the sun was peppering down on all of the steel so hot,
it kept me prancing along the loads like a football player running. I heard
the tough men cuss and swear and learned more good cuss words to use to get
work done.
My head was full of pictures like a movie--different from movies I'd
been sneaking into. The faked ones about outlaws, rich girls, playboys,
cowboys and Indians, and shooting scrapes, killings, and a pretty man
kissing a pretty girl on a pretty spot on a pretty day. It takes a lot more
guts, I thought, to work and heave and cuss and sweat and laugh and talk
like the oil field workers. Every man gritted every tooth in his head, and
stretched every muscle in his whole body--not trying to get rich or rare
back and loaf, because I'd hear one beller out, "Okay, you dam guys, hit 'er
up, or else git down out of a workin' man's way, an' let me put in a Goddam
oil field!"
A block and tackle man showed me how to lift all kinds of heavy stuff
with the double pulleys, "Ride 'em down! Grab 'em down! When th'
chain goes 'round, somethin's leavin' th' ground!" There was a twenty-foot
slush bucket used for getting mud and slush out of the hole, and it looked
so heavy in a railroad car that you never could lift it out; but you'd hear
a man on a handle of a crank yell out, 'Tong bucker, tong bucker! Mister
hooker man! Grab a root, boy! Grab a root!" The man on the hooks would yell
back, "Gimme slack! Gimme slack!" Some of the cable men would guide the big
hook over to the hooker man and yell out, "Give 'im slack! Give 'im slack!"
"Take it back! Take it back! Won't do one thing you don't like!" "Take yer
slack! Bring it back!" "Ridin' with ya! Got yer grab!" "Got my grab!" "Grab
a root an' growl! Grab a root an' growl!" "Take yore grab! Take 'er home!"
The men took in all of the slack on the chain or cable and it would get as
tight as a fiddle string, and the joint of bailing bucket would raise up off
of the floor of the car and one man would yell, "She was a good gal, but she
lost her footin'!"
I piled on top a wagon every day and set on a gunny sack stuck full of
hay, by the side of a teamskinner that told me all kinds of tales and yarns
about the other ten dozen oil fields he, personally, had put down. I picked
up five or ten books full of the cuss words the mule drivers use to talk to
each other, which are somewhat worse than the ones they use to cuss their
teams into pulling harder.
Out in the fields, I walked from derrick to derrick through the trees,
and hung around each place till the driller or the tool dresser would spot
me and yell, "Git th' hell outta here, son! Too dangerous!" The bull wheels
spun and the cable unrolled as they dropped the mud buckets down into the
hole; the boiler shot steam and danced on its foundation; the derrick shook