Yard War (8 page)

The truth is, Farish has a good arm for a girl. She may be only eight, but she can handle a baseball pretty good. Mama says she's a tomboy and her new short hair suits her. Farish probably would have cut it as short as a boy's if Mama had let her.

“You couldn't throw applesauce at a balloon,” she said.

“Twerp.”

“Goob.”

“Oooh, I'm gon' tell Mama you said ‘goob,' ” I said.

“No!”

There's nothing 'specially wrong with saying “goob,” but Farish didn't know that.

“Throw me some passes or I'm tellin'.” I handed her the ball.

She made a face like I smelled bad. “I'll throw from the patio. I do not feel like gettin' my feet dirty.”

Farish
loves
to get dirty.

“Okay, you can stand on the patio and protect your precious tootsies.”

“I'm gonna tell Mama you said ‘tootsies.' ”

“Let's see how you handle a football.”

I was running a crossing route from one side of the yard to the other.

“All you have to do is get the ball to me when I come by,” I told her. “Ready? On three.”

She nodded and made her determined face. I got set.

“Hut one! Hut two! Hut three!”

Every time I got to where I was supposed to catch it, the ball hit the ground ten yards behind me and rolled down the hill. Superman couldn't have backed up fast enough.

After I ran down there and brought it back a few times, I said, “Farish, listen. Aim for in front of me.”

“You mean throw it at the air?”

“Yes.”

“If you say so.”

I got into my stance.

“Hut one! Hut two!…”

Farish reared back and heaved it as hard as she could before I could even say “Hut three.” It cleared the second flower bed and rolled on down to the creek.

“Farish!”

“I threw it at the air, Trip! That's what you said!”

“Here!” I handed her the Hula-Hoop and went after the ball.

The Hula-Hoop came wobbling by as I walked back up the yard.

“Look, I did it!” she yelled. “All the way to the creek!”

“And you're gonna have to go get it, too!”

She took off running and was almost to the spot when I remembered. I had been checking for that snake from a safe distance every day, feeling the same sick in my stomach, not wanting to ever see it again—but at the same time wanting to, so I could chop its head off and not have to think about it anymore.

“The snake! The snake! Farish! Don't move!”

“Where?” She bent over and started looking all around. I ran down and dragged her away.

“That's right where it was,” I told her. “Still as a log. Just waiting for a dumb girl to put her foot on it.”

“I want to see it.”

“No you don't.”

“Maybe it's over on the other side.”

We stayed back from the bank and walked the length of the creek between our yard and Stokes's. It was hard to know for sure because the grass was so high in places, but we never saw it.

Then Farish said she wanted to get some sugar cane from Mr. Pinky's garden. I went back into the house to get a knife, and when I came out, Dee was on the patio telling Farish how glad he was to finally be finished with all that raking.

I invited him to come with us, and we walked down the backyard and over to the bridge and cut into Mr. Pinky's backyard. Mrs. Pinky was standing in her kitchen window, and I was afraid for her to see Dee with us. But she rapped on the glass and waved real big and smiled. At Dee, too. We stepped through the pumpkins, into the green jungle of sugar cane, and I sawed off a couple of joints of cane and stripped them and cut them into bite-size pieces.

We sat on the railroad ties between Mr. Pinky's garden and the Bethunes' yard and did us some chewin'.
There's nothing like sugar cane. It's like a chunk of fresh-cut tree that got soaked in water and grass and sugar. I warned Dee and Farish to be careful about running their fingers the wrong way on the ties. You don't want to get a splinter.

We chewed up our first batch and spit it out, and I cut some more. Farish was so busy chewing, she hardly said anything, which was a nice change. I showed Dee how I can squeeze my hands together and make fart noises come out from three different sides. He can do it with his armpit. Mostly we just sat and chewed. With some people I would have felt like it would be bad to let it get quiet. But with Dee, it didn't seem like we needed to talk unless we had something to say.

Mr. Pinky's back door slammed. His voice and a voice I didn't know were coming down to the garden. We could barely see them through the cane.

“Looks like your punkins are comin' right along,” the other voice said.

Farish stood up, and I could tell she was about to yell “Hey, Mr. Pinky!” so I put my hand over her mouth and sat her back down. I don't know why. It wasn't like we were doing anything wrong. I just liked being hidden up in there.

“I tell you what, I ain't sleepin' too good since them trains started comin' through here so late,” said the other voice. “That ol' bastud lays on that whistle.”

“Ol' bastud.”

Trains late at night don't bother me at all. They sound like news from the other side of the world.

“Punkins gon' be ready just in time for Halloween,” Mr. Pinky said.

“Looks like it, looks like it.”

“Y'all come get you one in a couple of weeks.”

When they went back inside, Farish asked me, “What's an ‘ol' bastud'?”

“Something bad,” I told her. “And you're not supposed to say it.”

I told Dee we oughta go get his mama to fix us some sandwiches because it was gonna be time to play football before too long. I bet him I could beat him back to the house, but he got there way ahead of me, which I already knew would happen. Farish got back to the house pretty fast too. For a girl.

Willie Jane was ironing and watching Ginny Lynn, and Dee begged her to let us change the channel to football. He said our TV was bigger than his.

We told Willie Jane we were starving and needed emergency sandwiches.

“Dee can have a sandwich,” she said, “but you can't.”

“What? Willie Jane, I'm sorry if I was mean about the pancakes, okay?”

“You still can't have a sandwich.”

“Why not?”

“Ya mama say y'all are havin' a sit-down family lunch because she and ya daddy are throwin' a party
tonight and there won't be time for a sit-down supper. A sandwich will spoil ya lunch.”

“Oh, come on.”

“She said heat up the leftover chicken and dumplings from last night, and cook some turnip greens to go with it and that's what you're gonna eat.”

“I'm starving!”

“And y'all can't be messin' up in here either. Keep this house clean,” she said. “Farish, play with ya sister while I fix some pimiento cheese.”

“I will watch my sister,” Farish said, “but I have absolutely no idea how to play with her, because she is four and I am eight.”

She copies Mama all the time, like “I have absolutely no idea.”

Willie Jane brought out a plate with three whole sandwiches after all, with potato chips, and milk with chocolate-flavored straws.

“Thanks, Willie Jane!” She knows how much I love her pimiento cheese.

The game on TV got boring and we started talking. Dee told me that the scariest show he ever saw was
Rodan,
about a giant bird monster. I told him about the picture of Moby-Dick in my
Book of Knowledge
collection. Moby-Dick is a giant white whale, big as a ship, and he's coming up out of the water with little beady eyes and a giant white jaw that would snap you
in half. When I was little, it scared me so bad I'd drop the book. I still have to sneak up on that page.

I took Dee back to my room and showed him the Moby-Dick picture and my monster model collection. He said he wasn't scared of Moby-Dick, but he really liked my Frankenstein. He said he was gonna buy a Rodan model kit he could make. I'm pretty sure they don't make a Rodan model kit, but I didn't say that. There's no point in discouraging somebody unless you have to.

When Mama called everybody to the table, I asked her if Dee could sit with us.

“His mama told me Dee already had lunch.”

“He could just sit with us.”

“Dee can watch TV while we eat.”

“But why can't he—”

“Because I said so.”

Willie Jane brought out the chicken and dumplings with some corn bread and a big bowl full of turnip greens. Daddy asked her to please bring him some hot sauce for his greens and a glass of buttermilk to dip his corn bread in. I looked at Farish and we both made a face.

Daddy had just gotten up from a nap. He said he had to work until “the wee hours” last night. I love staying up until the wee hours. My main goal in life until I was seven was to stay up all night like Daddy.
It finally happened when Stokes's mom took us to see a movie that had a banshee in it. All night, me and Stokes looked out his bedroom window at the clouds sailing past a full moon, seeing banshees and leprechauns and all kinds of creatures. It got tough around four a.m., but we had made a blood-brother vow to stay up until sunrise and it felt great to have done it. But not as great as I wanted it to feel. And now I had to think of another main goal in life.

Daddy started talking about the clinic in Kansas City again and said he was gonna fly up there pretty soon to see if it might be a good idea for us to move there. Every time he brings up the idea of moving, the girls whine, and Mama and I look down and don't say anything.

“We're just talking about it, girls,” Mama said. “It's nothing definite.”

“Y'all can move if you want to,” said Farish.

“Hush up and eat your turnip greens,” Mama said.

“No thank you.”

“Three bites. They're good for you.”

“I can't even eat one bite.”

“You heard me, young lady.”

“Do as your mother says, Farish,” Daddy said, like he really didn't care one way or the other.

Farish sighed and looked at her plate.

“Three bites,” Mama said.

Farish put the smallest amount she could get away
with on her fork and nudged it into her mouth like Mama was making her eat cat spit.

“Turnip greens is for ol' bastuds,” she said softly.

“What did you say, young lady?”

“I said turnip greens is ol' bastud food!”

Mama slapped Farish's hand, and Farish jumped up and ran to her room. Ginny Lynn's eyes got big as quarters.

Mama said, “Trip Westbrook, did you teach your sister that word?”

“No, ma'am.”

“Well, who did? Did Dee teach it to her?”

“No, ma'am, Mr. Pinky said it. He didn't know we could hear him.”

“You better not let me hear you sayin' it either.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Then she shot a look at Daddy that said this was somehow all his fault. She said everybody was going to be here for the party in just a few hours, and she didn't know how she was gonna be ready in time.

We finished lunch quick. Mama jumped up and went into the kitchen and started giving more instructions to Willie Jane.

Daddy and I stayed at the table and talked about bad words. I asked him exactly what “bastud” means, and he said the word is
“b-a-s-t-a-r-d”
and it's somebody whose father isn't married to his mother. Then I asked him about “yay-ho,” which is what Papaw calls
people he doesn't like. Daddy said the real word is “yahoo,” and it's from
Gulliver's Travels
by Jonathan Swift, and it means people who act like animals, not whoever disagrees with you, the way Papaw uses it.

Then I asked him if it was bad to call somebody a redneck. He said yes, because a redneck was an old-fashioned, uneducated person with old-fashioned, uneducated attitudes about most things, including colored people. He said he also knew some highly educated rednecks.

I told him Marcie Wofford called me a son of a bitch in the cafeteria when we were putting our trays up and I got banana pudding on her sleeve.

“What in the world is a seventh-grade girl doing using language like that?” he said.

“I don't know. I'm not a son of a bitch, though.”

“Certainly not, son. Certainly not.”

—

After lunch, me and Dee watched TV until the guys started showing up for the game. I promised Mama I would use all my allowance money for the next six months to buy her some new roses if we tore any up. I knew she did not agree with Daddy about letting this football game happen at all, and I knew it wasn't the roses she was really worried about. But she said okay.

I said I wanted Dee for my quarterback again, but
Andy said it wasn't fair to hog him, so this time Stokes and me and Calvin were the Rebels. Andy's team was the Viking Stompers.

Dee kidded Stokes that he'd better get ready to lose, and Stokes kidded him back. I guess I should have been glad that they were being friendly. But something bothered me about it. Dee was
my
idea. I was the one who discovered him.

Dee took off his red shirt and there was that same T-shirt that looked like it was about to come off in pieces. He took off his shoes, too, and said he couldn't even
feel
stickers, like he wanted everybody to know how tough he was. I liked it better last time, when he didn't seem so sure about everything. And he acted like he was just as happy to be on Andy's team as he had been on mine. Didn't he remember who called him a name last week?

Even more cars drove by this time, and most of them slowed down. Mrs. Sitwell came out to get her mail and stopped and watched us like we were criminals. I wanted to yell, “Go back in your house, old sourpuss face!”

The other reason I didn't want anybody watching was because the Rebels were getting stomped by the Stompers. The Dee-to-Andy pass combo was impossible to cover. Andy ran long almost every time, and Dee threw it just far enough ahead so Andy could
reach out and pull it in without even slowing down. Nobody can defend against that.