The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry Read online

It wasn’t long until the ducks began to get tired. They’d had a hard day of it, and one after another they quit ducking when the hoops came at them. They just sat there, looking fretful and disgusted and let the people win Uncle Burley’s profit. He’d made the throwing line only a few feet from the tank, and everybody began ringing ducks. The people who’d lost in the morning heard what was going on and came back. Uncle Burley’s pockets were flattening out fast. He looked more fretful and disgusted than the ducks.

  Finally he called Brother and me. He was down to six or seven dollars, and he gave us all but one of them. “Take care of things until I get back,” he said. “I won’t be a minute.”

  After Uncle Burley left, Brother stood by the tank to pick the hoops up, and I handled the money. Our first customer was the man in the brown suit who’d lost the bet to Uncle Burley that morning. I could see that he’d come back to get even, and I was afraid he’d make trouble, but he won five dollars on his second throw; that seemed to satisfy him, and he left. But then I was really in a mess; Uncle Burley hadn’t come back and I only had eighty cents.

  I was wondering what in the world I’d do if somebody else won and found out that I didn’t have money enough to pay him, when I saw the head fly off one of the ducks. It couldn’t have been done any neater with a butcher knife, but nobody was even close to the tank. I looked over at the shooting gallery, and there was Uncle Burley popping away at the target and ringing the bell every time. Then I saw him lead off toward the ducks as if he were making a wing shot; and another duck flopped in the tank.

  When he’d killed all the ducks Uncle Burley walked off ­toward the other end of the carnival without looking back. He was carrying a big red plaster frog that he’d won at the shooting gallery. Everybody stood around, looking at us and looking at the ducks and looking at Uncle Burley going off through the crowd, with their mouths open. Then they all laughed a little and began to straggle back into the carnival.

  I put Uncle Burley’s eighty cents in my pocket, and Brother and I started after him.

  We caught up with him in front of Bubbles’ tent. He and Big Ellis were listening to the man in the derby hat make his speech. We stood with them, listening a while, then Uncle Burley said, “Let’s go.”

  We elbowed our way out of the crowd and Big Ellis went with us.

  “I’d like to have a little something to drink,” he said to Uncle Burley.

  Uncle Burley just carried his red frog and didn’t say anything.

  Big Ellis said, “I got a little something.” He looked at Brother and me and then at Uncle Burley. “It’s all right, ain’t it?”

  “I imagine,” Uncle Burley said.

  He let Big Ellis take the lead, and we followed him across the grounds to where he’d parked his car. When we got there Big Ellis opened the door and rammed his hand into a hole in the driver’s seat and pulled out a pint of whiskey. He said that was the first Fourth of July he’d ever been able to hide it where Annie May couldn’t find it.

  “She can smell it before it’s even uncorked,” he said.

  He opened the bottle and passed it to Uncle Burley. Uncle Burley set the frog on the seat of the car and drank.

  “She couldn’t track it inside that seat,” Big Ellis said. He giggled and drank out of the bottle when Uncle Burley passed it back to him.

  They sat down and leaned against the side of the car, handing the bottle back and forth. Every time Big Ellis took a drink he’d giggle and say something about Annie May’s nose not being as good as it used to be.

  And the happier Big Ellis got the sadder Uncle Burley got. Those ducks had hurt his feelings and he couldn’t get over it.

  “God Almighty, women are awful,” Big Ellis said, and giggled and wiped the whiskey off his chin.

  He hadn’t any more than said it before Annie May came around the car, mad as a sow and screeching like a catamount. She told Big Ellis to get himself in that car and take her home. They left with Uncle Burley’s red frog sitting bug-eyed on the seat between them.

  Uncle Burley stood there with the bottle in his hand and watched them go. Then he drank the rest of the whiskey and threw the bottle down. He swayed back and forth, looking down at it.

  “Well,” he said, “around and around she goes.”

  It was dark by the time we got the tank emptied and loaded on the wagon and started home. Brother drove, and Uncle Burley sat on the back of the wagon leaning against the tank. He was quiet all the way.

  The moon was up when we turned into Grandpa’s gate, shining nearly as bright as day. The river bottom was white and quiet below us, and away off somewhere we could hear a dog barking. It seemed a long time since the Fourth of July.

  The next morning Annie May Ellis came over to bring the red frog home, and told Grandma about Uncle Burley’s day at the picnic. Grandma told Grandpa and Daddy, and from then on Uncle Burley had no peace. Grandma lit into him about his sinful behavior every chance she got. Grandpa ignored him, but he ignored him in a way that kept all of us from being comfortable when the two of them were together. Even Daddy was aggravated, and that was unusual because he and Uncle Burley had always allowed each other to be the way they were and had got along.

  Nobody knew what to do with the red frog. Uncle Burley was too proud to claim it, and Grandpa was too proud to throw it away. Annie May had set it on the mantelpiece in the living room when she came in that morning, and it stayed there. Grandma said she’d just leave it as a reminder to Uncle Burley. But it was a better reminder to her and Grandpa and Daddy than it was to Uncle Burley. He never looked at it.

  He was used to that sort of trouble and he stood it well enough. He stayed in a quiet good humor that kept him always a little beyond their reach. But it was intentional good humor; there were times when it was too quiet and too pleasant, and although it spared him a lot of his trouble it could be as insulting as the red frog. He wouldn’t say he was sorry and he wouldn’t let them make him mad. That kept them after him.

  During the week he worked hard. He stood the work the same way he stood everything else, laughing when he could, saying no more than he had to. The work sheltered him; he didn’t give them a chance to find fault with him in that. When it was over on Saturday night he ate his supper and left. He’d go to the camp house at the river and stay until Monday morning, avoiding Sunday when Grandma had sin on her mind and Grandpa and Daddy had time enough to be quarrelsome.

  While this was going on Brother and I quit being as good friends as we’d always been. I didn’t know when it started, but things gradually began to change between us. He started running around with boys who were older than I was, and he went to town every Saturday night. Sometimes I noticed that I called him Tom instead of Brother. I was sorry, but he never gave me a chance to talk about it, and it just kept happening. I spent more time with Uncle Burley; and once in a while I’d walk to the Easterlys’ and talk to Calvin. I didn’t like Calvin much, but he was about my age, and he was better than nobody.

  One Saturday at the end of July, while we were at work in the hay, Big Ellis and Gander Loyd began riding Brother about having a girl in town. I didn’t pay much attention to it then. But that evening, after we’d done the chores and Brother had gone upstairs to get ready for town, Grandma said, “Tom’s got a girl, hasn’t he?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Well, I don’t know either. But he’s getting old enough. And if I know the signs he’s got a girl.” She shook her head. “Lord, it seems just yesterday when he was a baby.”

  She finished straining the milk and went into the kitchen to start supper, and I went to the front porch and sat in the swing. I could hear Uncle Burley calling his hounds. He whistled and called each one by its name. In the field by the house Grandpa’s mules were grazing along the side of the hill. I could see the sweaty marks of the harness on their backs and shoulders. They looked naked and strange without the harness. The day had come apart. After the week of hard work Sunday would feel awkward and too qui
et, and even though we were glad of the rest we’d be a little relieved when it was Monday again. I heard the hounds come up to be fed, barking around Uncle Burley until he pitched the food to them, then quiet. A few swifts circled up into the sky and down again over the tops of the chimneys. The mules grazed side by side on the hill, walking together as if they were still at work.

  In a little while Brother came around the corner of the house. He’d already eaten his supper and was dressed up, ready to go. His hair was shiny and black from the oil he’d put on it, and I could smell shaving lotion.

  “You going to town?” I asked him.

  “You got any objections?”

  “What’re you going to town for?”

  He grinned at me, feeling the part in his hair with the ends of his fingers. “You don’t know, do you?”

  I watched him walk down the driveway and turn toward town. Uncle Burley came up and leaned against the post at the corner of the porch. He’d hunted me up to stay with me until supper was ready; he wouldn’t risk being alone with Grandpa even that long. I scooted over and made room for him.

  But he stood there, watching Brother walk out the lane. “Where’s he going?”

  “To town.”

  “He’s courting a little, I expect.”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  Uncle Burley sat down. He leaned his head back and yawned and then closed his eyes. “There’s one good thing about work,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Stopping.”

  Grandma called us to supper. We went inside and washed our hands and sat down at the table. It was hot and stuffy in the kitchen, and with Brother gone the meal was quieter than usual. As long as Uncle Burley was there Grandma and Grandpa wouldn’t allow themselves to say anything pleasant, and they seemed too tired to be in a bad humor.

  When Grandpa had cleaned his plate he turned his chair to the window and looked out at the sky. “We’ll get a rain,” he said. “It’s been too hot.”

  He got up after a minute and left the room, and before the rest of us were finished eating we heard him going up the stairs.

  “He’s gone to roost,” Uncle Burley said.

  “You’ve got no respect, Burley,” Grandma said.

  She’d meant to say more, but held it back. She looked down at her plate, and then got up and began clearing the table.

  Uncle Burley and I went to the porch again. He lit a cigarette and sharpened the end of the match to pick his teeth. Neither of us said anything. The day had been hot, and it was still hot. No air was stirring.

  Uncle Burley flipped the butt of his cigarette out into the yard. He laughed then—­quietly and to himself, as if it were the laughter he’d had ready for whatever Grandma had intended to say to him; and now he used it up, wasted it on himself, to be rid of it.

  He got up and stood on the edge of the porch, looking out in the direction of the road. He held his hands open in front of him and looked at them, then rubbed them together. “Well,” he said. He stepped off the porch and walked slowly across the yard. Halfway down the driveway he looked back and waved at me. After that he walked faster, on down the driveway and out the lane.

  When he was out of sight I called to Grandma that I was going over to see Calvin, and I started through the field toward the Easterlys’. It was nearly dark, but when I looked back the swifts still circled above the house. They dived at the chimney tops, and swerved away as if they couldn’t bear for the day to end. Finally, I knew, they’d give up the light and go down for good.

  When I got to the Easterlys’ I called Calvin from the back door. He came out and we sat down on the step.

  “What you been doing?” he asked me.

  “Working mostly.”

  “Where’s Tom?”

  “Gone to town.”

  “He’s got a girl out there, ain’t he?”

  “They say he has.”

  “He has,” Calvin said. He took a sack of peppermint sticks out of his pocket and took one and gave one to me.

  “Maybe he has,” I said.

  “What we ought to do,” Calvin said, “is slip out to town and watch him.”

  “It’s his business,” I said.

  “Come on. It won’t hurt anything. You’ll have something to tell on Tom when you go to work Monday morning.”

  “All right,” I said.

  Calvin laughed and stomped his foot. “God durn, I wish I could be there when you tell it on him.”

  There was a crowd in town. Groups of men squatted on the sidewalk in front of the stores, talking and greeting each other. Up the street beyond the store lights the small children played tag, running and laughing around the parked automobiles. Women collected in the stores and talked while they shopped, and carried out armloads of groceries. A few of them were already standing at the edge of the sidewalk, holding their babies, waiting for their men to be ready to go home. Above the rest of the noise you could hear the jukebox playing in the poolroom.

  Brother and four or five other boys were standing with two girls in the light of the drugstore window. He was talking and the others leaned toward him, listening to what he said. The prettiest one of the girls stood next to Brother, smiling at him while he talked, and he spoke mostly to her. She was his girl, I imagined, and I was proud of him for having one so pretty. While I watched him standing there with the other boys it seemed to me that he was the best of them, and I began to be ashamed of what I’d come to town for.

  When he finished talking all of them laughed. The girl swung away from him, holding to his hand, and he pulled her back and put his arm around her.

  I stood with Calvin, pretending to look in the grocery store window, hoping Brother wouldn’t see me. But then the whole bunch of them started up the street past us. I didn’t want Brother to know I’d sneaked on him, and I turned toward him to make the best of it.

  “Hello,” he said. “What’re you doing here?”

  For a minute I couldn’t think what to say. Then I said, “Let’s go down to the river and talk to Uncle Burley for a while.”

  They laughed, looking at Brother and then at me.

  “Go ahead,” Brother told me. “Who’s stopping you?”

  The way he said it made me mad. “I reckon you’d rather stay here and fool around with a damn girl,” I said.

  Brother’s face got red and he took a step toward me, but the girl pulled at his arm. “Come on,” she said.

  He looked at me and laughed, then he turned around and they went past me and on up the street.

  I stood still for a minute, feeling my own face red and knowing I’d made a fool of myself. There was no other way to see it. What I’d said had been wrong. Brother ought to have slapped my face for saying it. And I thought I should have knocked Calvin’s teeth out for suggesting that we come to town in the first place. I turned to tell him so, but he was gone. I looked around for him and saw him going into the drugstore. He was ashamed of me too.

  I started back down the street. The game had moved down in front of the stores, the children chasing each other in and out of the crowd. As I walked away I heard a woman’s voice telling them, “Get someplace else if you want to play.”

  I went out the road toward home, feeling lonesome and stupid and ashamed. For a while I could hear the noise of the town, the music and talking and laughter, more quietly and more quietly as I got farther away. The frogs were singing in Big Ellis’s pond when I passed, the sounds getting louder and then quieting too. I turned into our lane, but I didn’t feel like going to bed and I went on past the house and down Coulter Branch toward the river. Now and then I’d hear a screech owl calling, and now and then a dog barked down in the bottom.

  When I got to Uncle Burley’s shack a light was burning in the window. I opened the door and went through the dark kitchen and into the other room where Uncle Burley and Big Ellis were sitting with a bottle of whiskey and a lighted lamp on the table between them. Their backs were turned to the kitchen door, and Uncle Burle
y had pulled one of the cots away from the wall and propped his feet on it. When Big Ellis looked around and saw me he started to hide the bottle, but Uncle Burley caught his arm and stopped him.

  “It’s all right.”

  “He’s a good boy, that boy is,” Big Ellis said.

  Uncle Burley grinned at me. “The more the merrier,” he said. “Have a seat.”

  I crossed the room and sat down on the other cot.

  “Where you been, boy?” Uncle Burley asked me.

  “I went to town a while,” I said, “and then I came down here.”

  “I’m glad you came,” Uncle Burley said.

  “He’s a pretty damn good boy, I tell you,” Big Ellis said.

  Neither of them could think of anything else to say. They just smoked, and passed the bottle once in a while, looking at the wall.

  Finally Uncle Burley said, “It’s hot.”

  “It’s too hot,” Big Ellis said. “We’re bound to get some rain.”

  They were quiet again for a minute or two, and then Uncle Burley looked at Big Ellis and grinned as if he’d just thought of something that made him happy.

  “I wonder if old Jig’s at home,” he said.

  Big Ellis leaned toward the window and looked up the river toward Jig Pendleton’s shanty boat. “No light up there. I expect he’s asleep.”

  “The more the merrier,” Uncle Burley said. He got up and went out the door.

  Big Ellis and I followed him onto the porch. Jig’s boat was dark and quiet. We could barely make out the shape of it through the trees.

  “Call him,” Big Ellis said.

  Uncle Burley cupped his hands around his mouth and called, “Jig!”

  There was no answer.

  “Call him again,” Big Ellis said; and Uncle Burley called again.

  “What?” Jig said.

  “Come on down,” Uncle Burley said. “We’re having a little social event here.”

  Jig didn’t answer, but before long he came out with a lantern and untied his rowboat. We heard the knock and creak of his oarlocks as he came down the river toward us.

  Jig tied the boat to a tree and climbed the bank. When he came onto the porch we went back inside and he followed us.