Page 14 of The Night the Lights Went Out
“I reckon I could hide the jar under the back porch steps, keep ’em out of the sun. I’ll feed them some grass and leaves from the lake every day.”
“How come you know what tadpoles eat?”
Jimmy shrugged. “I’ve been sitting on the edge of that lake nearly all day, hardly moving, just staring at them frogs and tadpoles. You learn a lot about something when you just watch.” He squinted at me again. “Like when Mama says she’s tired she really means she’s just not interested.”
I wanted to say something good about Mama, about how she’d never been this tired before the last three babies—all of them buried in the tiny cemetery in the woods, and all three come and gone in less than two years. She got real tired after that. Stopped cooking and cleaning and tending her vegetable garden, and sewing and mending, and asking us kids how we were feeling. Pretty much stopped doing everything except singing sad and listening to our brother Bobby reading to her from her books she’d brought from Savannah.
Willa Faye’s mama helped as much as she could until Mama got better, but I didn’t see how that was gonna happen with her spending most of her time taking a lie-down or rocking on the front porch without even mending to keep her busy.
A shadow fell on us, and Jimmy and me looked up to see Lamar Jenkins. His daddy, Rufus, had come to us from a ranch in Texas when Lamar was small and he’d wanted to get out of Texas on account of his wife and little baby girl dying from the influenza. Rufus knew lots about cows, which was why Daddy hired him.
Rufus had skin as black as coal and was as tall as he was wide, which was why nobody messed with him. And he knew cows better than my daddy. The big secret about Rufus was that he was the gentlest person you could ever want to meet. I once saw him jump into the lake to save a baby bird that had tumbled into it while looking for worms. He scowled at me and Jimmy and made us swear we wouldn’t tell a soul what we’d seen.
Lamar was only ten but already as tall as Harry, who was almost seventeen. He was going to be as big as Rufus, according to my daddy, and I was glad since that meant people wouldn’t mess with him, neither. His skin was so black that Will swore he could hide at night if he was stark naked and kept his eyes closed. I think he might have been right.
“Hey, Lamar,” Jimmy said as we both got to our feet. “Look what we got.”
Lamar studied it real close. “Looks like a bunch of tadpoles. You gonna watch ’em turn into frogs?”
I smiled at Lamar. He was smart like Jimmy, but I could tell people didn’t give his brains any account because of how black he was. And how big. It was like another secret Jimmy and I shared, and I was fine with that. Because then I wouldn’t have to share Lamar and Jimmy with anybody.
“Yep,” said Jimmy. “We’re gonna put the jar underneath the back steps.”
Lamar nodded. “Just make sure those brothers of yours don’ see you. They never seed somethin’ they don’ want to destroy.”
As if they knew we were talking about them, we heard a big hollering and whooping out by the barn. We all turned and watched Harry riding Grace, the steady old mare who pulled the hay wagon. He was supposed to be checking the property fences, but it didn’t look like he was inclined too much to be working.
He began digging his heels into Grace’s sides as if he wanted her to go faster, and I shouted for him to stop because she was old and, really, a slow walk was about as fast as she could go. We were too far for him to hear, so we began to run toward the barn, Jimmy’s hand flat over the top of the Mason jar so it wouldn’t slosh over, Grandpa’s binoculars bouncing on his skinny chest. He was fast, even if his foot was facing the wrong way. He wouldn’t win any beauty pageants with his running, but he sure could beat anyone in a footrace.
As we got closer we saw Will up in the haymow, peering through the double doors and looking like he was getting ready to jump. Which was crazy, because everybody knew it was too far off the ground. It was where we parked the wagon and shoved out the hay with a pitchfork, but I didn’t see any wagon or hay in sight, just a pitchfork leaning against the side of the barn like it was watching those foolish boys.
We heard a shout from the other side of the barn and spotted Rufus running toward the barn, too, waving his straw hat to get their attention. “You boys quit it, ya hear? You gonna break your sorry necks, is what you gonna do.” He ran so fast that later Jimmy said it was like you couldn’t see his feet.
“Hey, Rufus!” Will hung out of the haymow, one hand clutching the opening. It took me a minute to recognize the jug of moonshine he waved with his other hand. I figured it was from the still we had in the woods even though it wasn’t against the law to drink anymore. Daddy said it was just cheaper to make our own, so we did. Us kids weren’t supposed to be drinking it, though, so after I stopped shouting at Harry to stop kicking the horse—not that he listened—I started shouting at Will because he was going to get in a lick of trouble if Daddy found out about the moonshine.
That’s when I saw somebody behind him, and I hoped it wasn’t Bobby. He was thirteen and his favorite thing to do in the world was read. He’d disappear for hours and sometimes Mama would ask him to read to her.
But it wasn’t Bobby. It was some boy I’d never seen before, but I knew who it was. A new sharecropper family had moved into the abandoned cabin on the other side of the woods, and I’d seen the mama and her two little girls at church, both looking as thin and pale as corn husks left out in the sun. The mama had nodded at us and smiled a little, showing she had more teeth missing than not, and said her husband and son had stayed behind to help with a sick mule. Not that we would question her, because Mama didn’t go to church anymore, neither, because of her being so tired all the time.
The boy was as tall as Harry and skinny like a beanpole, and as I got closer I could see thick dark hair that looked like he cut it himself in the dark. He was smiling, except it wasn’t really a smile. It was like when Harry or Will said they had a surprise for me and it usually turned up to be a bullfrog they wanted to stick down the back of my dress.
“Don’t fall,” he said, pushing Will forward.
I screamed right as the boy pulled him back and started laughing, like it was funny to have nearly pushed somebody out of a haymow.
Will raised the jug to his mouth like nothing had happened and took a big swallow, swaying like a strong wind was about to blow him over. I held my breath, watching as the boy behind him held on to the back of his shirt, that smile still on his face.
“You there,” Rufus shouted up to them. “You quit that right now ’fore somebody gets hurt. Come on down the ladder and I won’ tell Mr. Prescott.”
Grace had stopped, saliva foaming all over her mouth, and Harry was half hanging out of the saddle. I heard a sound and saw he was throwing up all over his bare leg. It was a sorry sight and I said a little prayer that Daddy was way off in some field so Harry could clean this mess up before he got home.
“You cain’t tell me what to do, boy.” He pushed Will again, pulling him back just in time but hard enough that Will dropped the jug, crockery exploding every which way as it hit a rock. Grace snorted and skirted back a step or two as the pitchfork shimmied down the side of the barn like it didn’t want to see any more and lay in the dirt on its back, staring up at the sky. I didn’t scream this time because I was too scared, but Jimmy took a step forward. “Cut it out, Curtis. It ain’t funny.”
I didn’t think to ask him how he knew the boy’s name. Jimmy always seemed to know everything.
And then everything seemed to move fast and slow all at the same time. The first thing I remembered was hearing the sound of something ripping as Curtis pushed Will again. Except this time when he tried to pull him back, Will kept falling.
A wad of Will’s red and blue plaid shirt was crumpled in Curtis’s hand, his arm still stretched out like he still thought my brother should be attached to the shirt. And then Rufus was moving forward and we were all running and Harry was passed out on top of Grace and Will was falling for what seemed forever.
