The Floatplane Notebooks (7 page)

Leg?

Why sure. It'll give him great pain if we don't dispose of it rightly.

Well we got room.

I'd be mighty obliged said Mrs Cook. It is a nice little graveyard with the babies and all and I want to dispose of his leg rightly. I told him what I had in mind and he seemed agreeable. I certainly appreciate it. She drove away in her buggy.

A few minutes later Walker said to Ross You need to build a coffin for Timothy Cook's leg. Then you'll have to go get the leg. It's in their smokehouse. We're going to bury it out here this evening.

A coffin?

A coffin. A leg coffin.

I got to go get his leg.

That's right.

How much of it got blowed off?

It was at his knee. Make it a infant coffin like the others. A little longer maybe. Walker held his hands showing the length. That'll be plenty long. No need for nothing fancy. And the grave needn't be deep. I'll dig it.

That evening they stood in a small group out in the graveyard read a Bible scripture and buried the leg.

On the next blue moon, the leg was in a dark maple rocking cradle, just like the cradles for three infant cousins of the family who were out there with Thomas Pittman, and were crying. Thomas Pittman couldn't see the leg in the coffin because it was added at the end of the short row of infants. But he sang to it along with the infants, even though they cried.

I know where home plate and first base and second base and third base is. I like third base best of all. Papa lets me play third-base coach sometimes because I'm a girl. I go with them down to the ball field when Papa takes us down there. Him and Meredith and Mark all pitch and hit. Thatcher used to come before he got married, but he'd just stand in the field way out there and scratch between his legs and look off at the woods and make Papa mad at him.

Papa gets mad at Meredith for not hitting the way he wants him to.

And Mark is the pitcher but Meredith wants to be.

The best thing that happened at the ball field was when Meredith slid the truck down the left field bank. Right down into the trash pile.

Meredith don't have his driver's license yet, but Papa lets him drive the truck down to the ball field and empty the trash over the left field bank where the trash pile is. Mark
goes with him. Meredith don't ever let me go so I walk down there through the woods and watch them. He drives fast across the ball field and then the truck turns and slides around like everything. Sometimes they get out and throw rocks at jars or shoot the .22 at Pepsi bottles. And sometimes Meredith lets Mark drive the truck.

Papa don't know Mark goes down there with Meredith. I'm waiting to tell on them when either one tells on me about something.

Last winter it snowed real, real long and Meredith and Mark took the truck down to the ball field while everybody was gone off. The tires had chains but that didn't do no good.

I was in the living room when Meredith walked in the kitchen and said something to Papa. I walked to the door and listened.

“It's where?” said Papa.

“Down the left field bank at the ball field,” said Meredith.

“In that trash-pile garbage dump?”

“Yessir.”

“What the…. How…. Who did it?”

“Mark.”

They walked out the back door and I got my coat and boots and followed them. Papa slipped on the ice and Meredith grabbed him.

We stepped into the screened-in porch at Mark's house and stomped our feet. The porch was quiet and dark because of the deep snow on the ground and the snow stuck in the screen.

Aunt Esther opened the door. I smelled meat loaf. “Wait a minute,” she said. “Let me get you a broom to clean off them shoes with.” Mark came up behind her.

She handed out a broom and closed the door.

Papa told Aunt Esther what happened and she got mad at Mark. Then Papa, Meredith, and Mark walked to the ball field. I followed them. I walked on top of the glaze on the snow.

When we got there it was getting cold. Their faces were red in the cold. They looked down at the jeep. It was pointed uphill. The whole weather seemed like it was gray.

“One of your earflaps is up,” said Meredith to Papa. Papa was wearing his old hunting cap with the earflaps.

“That ear ain't cold.”

Meredith looked down at the truck. “We'll get it out,” he said. ‘And we can come down here and start it up every morning until the snow goes away.”

“It really ain't so bad,” said Mark.

They stood looking down at the truck.

“I swear,” said Papa. “My jeep. In the trash pile.”

“It didn't quite reach the trash pile,” said Meredith.

They started walking home. I followed them. I stayed on top of the snow but they sunk in.

Meredith stopped at a place where a shortcut turned through the woods. Papa was in front and kept walking. I was behind. Mark kept walking behind Papa, crunching in the snow, then stopped. I stopped. Papa kept walking. Meredith nodded toward the woods and him and Mark went that way.

I caught up with Papa and stayed close behind him because I didn't know what they might be getting ready to do in the woods.

Why the hell do I have to get the damn truck out of the damn trash pile? Why me? It don't make sense. If I had drove the damn truck over the damn left field bank of the ball field you think
Meredith
would be helping get it out? Hell no. You think Papa would make him help get it out? Hell no. You think Meredith would be within twenty miles when I got it out? Hell no. You think it would make any difference to Papa where Meredith was when I was getting the truck out if I drove it down there? Hell no.

Papa wouldn't even ever let me drive hardly. And that's after I got a driver's license. And Meredith don't even have a driver's license yet because he didn't pass driver's education. He got a note sent home because he told Sandra Tilly, right before her time to drive, when they walked around the car trading places, that she would have to slam on the brakes because they were real weak and went all the way to the floor, but the brakes really had just been serviced and tightened—feather
sensitive—and Sandra Tilly hit the brakes like stomping a snake I reckon and went into a skid which scared her so bad she had to drop out. The next note said Meredith was out of driver's training because he had run off the road trying to run over a possum that somebody had hit and not killed. And driver's training was run by Coach Kelly, who wouldn't get upset at just anything. And another thing is Meredith and Mark both got kicked off the ball team for two weeks because Meredith stuck a record needle in the seam on a baseball at one of their ballgames so that when Mark pitched it it would jump all around. Nobody had ever heard of doing it except Mark read it somewhere and of course Meredith had to try it out. If it can be tried out, Meredith will try it out.

So we borrow Babe Terrell's tractor, that off brand Earth-Master, made in Russia or somewhere, which has strange gears I ain't used to—but I can drive the thing. Papa borrowed Fred Burgess's John Deere. See, it was Papa's idea to pull the truck out with two tractors.

The snow melted, and on a Friday night before we pulled it out Saturday, he sat us all down in the living room. At night he'll sit us on the couch instead of outside on the root.

“Okay,” he said. “I'm going to explain to y'all how we're going to get the truck out of the trash pile. With a little thinking and a little natural suspension you can do almost anything. Physics. Now the angle up that bank is high enough that the friction available to the tires of one tractor probably ain't going to do it. Friction is how one surface holds another, and the earth on the left field bank has to hold the tractor wheels or they'll spin. If they spin the truck stays where it is. With two tractors there'll be half as much chance of each one
spinning so you're working on the principal of friction in your favor. What natural suspension does is—”

“Why don't you get a wrecker down there and wrench it out?” asked Meredith.

“Because with two tractors you can get at natural suspension. Be quiet.”

“Why ain't Meredith getting it out?” asked Noralee.

“He is. He's helping.”

“That's a good question,” I said. “He's getting helped by the whole neighborhood. I'd hate to see what would have happened if it'd been me drove the truck down the left field bank.”

“I didn't drive it down there,” Meredith said. “Mark did. But it was both of us in there. Both of us'll have to pay.”

“Pay what?” I asked.

“Whatever it costs.”

“That's a joke. It ain't going to cost nothing.”

“If we get a wrecker.”

I got the EarthMaster and drove it down to the ball field Saturday afternoon. Mr. Thompson, the principal, had found out about it and he was down there. And Bliss, and Papa, and about ninety kids.

We hooked up two long chains to the front axle of the truck. Papa had Mr. Burgess's John Deere. I said why don't we try it with one first, and Papa said that would be like wasting food, that we had two tractors and we ought to use them both, and you couldn't get at natural suspension with just one tractor. Just like Papa.

Mr. Thompson made all the kids stand back fifty feet in
case a chain link popped, which it won't about to do. The truck pulled right up, easy. One tractor could have done it. But there was some kind of metal box from the trash pile that had jammed up under the truck while we were pulling it out so we had to jack it up and get that out. Mr. Thompson made all the kids stand back again, said the truck might fall. Hell, the kids probably wished they hadn't bothered to come.

So before I drove Babe Terrell's tractor back, I told Meredith that I was going to pay Mr. Terrell a dollar for gas and would he please fork it over since he was paying for the rescue. He says he don't have a dollar and Mark forks out a dollar and Meredith says he'll pay him back half. So I told Papa that so far Mark had paid one dollar on expenses and Mr. Meredith had not paid one red cent, which on doomsday still won't be paid.

We left as usual at four a.m. last Thursday morning for our Florida trip, my tenth. This year the trip had a somewhat different flavor because of two reasons. First, and most dreadfully, Meredith and Mark will both be leaving for military service next summer—Mark for pilot training and Meredith, the Marines. While this was not discussed at great length, and I'm confident will not be, I couldn't help letting my dread and heartbreak slip into casual conversation. Meredith and Mark are, of course, enthusiastic about their upcoming “adventures”—as they see them. There is nothing I can do to abate their eagerness.

The family doesn't seem to be particularly bothered, or perhaps I mean they don't show it.

The second reason the trip had a somewhat different flavor was the presence of Meredith's fiancée, Rhonda Gibbs, a young blond woman of strong personality, heavy makeup, hoarse voice, with nonetheless a good heart, I'm sure. She
sings in a rock-and-roll band. Meredith has dated her off and on for a long time, but their relationship has really taken off since summer. He's kept me posted, and got me to help him pick out a diamond ring which he gave her at Thanksgiving. They've yet to settle on a wedding date, however.

Meredith has changed so little since Thatcher and I got married it's almost a miracle. It's as if little Meredith, with his cocky walk and that ever-present twinkle in his eye, suddenly became
grown
Meredith with that cocky walk and ever-present twinkle in his eye. He hasn't calmed down one bit. He's working for General Telephone, a lineman, and loves it. I so tried to get him to go back to Listre Community College. He went for one year and then dropped out. Though his grades didn't show it, he's certainly smart enough to go to college. When I talk to him about it, he always says he wants to work outdoors with his hands, then he'll say what Mr. Copeland is always saying: “There's no tool like your fingers.”

Meredith and Mark have remained good friends—hunting and double-dating together in spite of the fact that Mark has entered, and next spring will graduate from, East Carolina College, though they aren't as close as they were when they were younger. Lord knows what all Meredith has gotten Mark into in their brief lives. The most recent discovery was that a year or two before Meredith fell down the well, he and Mark dropped a tombstone and a chicken down there. Somebody told that story at the last gravecleaning.

The last ten years have flown by. I got a secretarial position at Listre Elementary after two years at Listre Community College, and we saved most of my salary. Then after four years of that, our precious son, Taylor, was born—Taylor Meredith.
He's four now, looks like both of us, and has a very sweet disposition. Since he was born I've been working part-time at the school.