A Painted House (Page 40)

My parents retreated to the front porch, where they sat on the steps, waiting for a breeze and a break from the relentless heat. At first they whispered, but their burdens were too heavy, and their words could not be suppressed. Certain that I was asleep, they talked louder than they normally would have.

I slipped out of bed and slid across the floor like a snake. At the window, I glanced out and saw them in their familiar spot, backs to me, a few feet away.

I absorbed every sound. Things had not gone well at the Latchers’. Libby had been somewhere in the back of the house with the baby, who cried nonstop. All the Latchers seemed frayed and worn out by the crying. Mr. Latcher was angry with Percy for coming to our house, but he was even angrier when he talked about Libby. She was telling that she didn’t want to fool around with Ricky, but he made her anyway. Pappy denied this was the case, but he had nothing to stand on. He denied everything, and said he doubted if Ricky had ever met Libby.

But they had witnesses. Mr. Latcher himself said that on two occasions, just after Christmas, Ricky pulled up in their front yard in Pappy’s pickup and took Libby for a ride. They drove to Monette, where Ricky bought her a soda.

My father speculated that if that really did happen, then Ricky chose Monette because fewer people would know him there. He’d never be seen in Black Oak with the daughter of a sharecropper.

"She’s a beautiful girl," my mother said.

The next witness was a boy of no more than ten. Mr. Latcher summoned him from the pack huddled around the front steps. His testimony was that he’d seen Pappy’s truck parked at the end of a field row, next to a thicket. He sneaked up on the truck, and got close enough to see Ricky and Libby kissing. He kept it quiet because he was scared, and had come forth with the story only a few hours earlier.

The Chandlers, of course, had no witnesses. On our side of the river, there’d been no hint of a budding romance. Ricky certainly would not have told anyone. Pappy would’ve hit him.

Mr. Latcher said he suspected all along that Ricky was the father, but Libby had denied it. And in truth, there were a couple of other boys who’d shown an interest in her. But now she was telling everything-that Ricky had forced himself on her, that she didn’t want the baby.

"Do they want us to take it?" my mother asked.

I almost groaned in pain.

"No, I don’t think so," my father said. "What’s another baby around their house?"

My mother thought the baby deserved a good home. My father said it was out of the question until Ricky said it was his child. Not likely, knowing Ricky.

"Did you see the baby?" my mother asked.

"No."

"He’s the spittin’ image of Ricky," she said.

My one recollection of the newest Latcher was that of a small object that reminded me, at the time, of my baseball glove. He barely looked human. But my mother and Gran spent hours analyzing the faces of people to determine who favored whom, and where the eyes came from, and the nose and hair. They’d look at babies at church and say, "Oh, he’s definitely a Chisenhall." Or, "Look at those eyes, got ’em from his grandmother."

They all looked like little dolls to me.

"So you think he’s a Chandler?" my father said.

"No doubt about it."

Chapter 18

It was Saturday again, but Saturday without the usual excitement of going to town. I knew we were going because we had never skipped two Saturdays in a row. Gran needed groceries, especially flour and coffee, and my mother needed to go to the drugstore. My father hadn’t been to the Co-op in two weeks. I didn’t have a vote in the matter, but my mother knew how important the Saturday matinee was to the proper development of a child, especially a farm kid with little contact with the rest of the world. Yes, we were going to town, but without the usual enthusiasm.

A new horror was upon us, one that was far more frightening than all this business about Hank Spruill. What if somebody heard what the Latchers were telling? It took just one person, one whisper at one end of Main Street, and the gossip would roar through the town like a wildfire. The ladies in Pop and Pearl’s would drop their baskets and cover their mouths in disbelief. The old farmers hanging around the Co-op would smirk and say, "I’m not surprised." The older kids from church would point at me as if I were somehow the guilty one. The town would seize the rumor as if it were the gospel truth, and Chandler blood would be forever tainted.

"A Painted House"

So I didn’t want to go to town. I wanted to stay home and play baseball and maybe go for a walk with Tally.

Little was said over breakfast. We were still very subdued, and I think this was because we all knew the truth. Ricky had left behind a little memory. I wondered to myself if he knew about Libby and the baby, but I wasn’t about to bring up the subject. I’d ask my mother later.

"Carnival’s in town," Pappy said. Suddenly the day was better. My fork froze in midair.

"What time are we goin’?" I asked.

"The same. Just after lunch," Pappy said.

"How late can we stay?"

"We’ll see about that," he said.

The carnival was a wandering band of gypsies with funny accents who lived in Florida during the winter and hit the small farming towns in the fall, when the harvest was in full swing and folks had money in their pockets. They usually arrived abruptly on a Thursday and then set up on the baseball field without permission, and stayed through the weekend. Nothing excited Black Oak like the carnival.

A different one came to town each year. One had an elephant and a giant loggerhead turtle. One had no animals at all but specialized in odd humans-tumbling midgets, the girl with six fingers, the man with an extra leg. But all carnivals had a Ferris wheel, a merry-go-round, and two or three other rides that squeaked and rattled and generally terrified all the mothers. The Slinger had been such a ride, a circle of swings on chains that went faster and faster until the riders were flying parallel to the ground and screaming and begging to stop. A couple of years earlier in Monette, a chain had snapped, and a little girl had been flung across the midway and into the side of a trailer. The next week the Slinger was in Black Oak, with new chains, and folks lined up to ride it.

There were booths where you threw rings and darts and shot pellet pistols to win prizes. Some carnivals had fortune-tellers, others had photo booths, still others had magicians. They were all loud and colorful and filled with excitement. Word would spread quickly through the county, and people would flock in, and in a few hours Black Oak would be packed. I was desperate to go.

Perhaps, I thought, the excitement of the carnival would suppress any curiosity about Libby Latcher. I choked down my biscuits and ran outside.

"The carnival’s in town," I whispered to Tally when we met at the tractor for the ride to the fields.

"Y’all goin’?" she asked.

"Of course. Nobody misses the carnival."

"I know a secret," she whispered, her eyes darting around.

"What is it?"

"Somethin’ I heard last night."

"Where’d you hear it?"

"By the front porch."

I didn’t like the way she was stringing me along. "What is it?"

She leaned even closer. " ‘Bout Ricky and that Latcher girl. Guess you got a new cousin." Her words were cruel, and her eyes looked mean. This was not the Tally I knew.

"What were you doin’ out there?" I asked.

"None of your business."

Pappy came from the house and walked to the tractor. "You’d better not tell," I said through clenched teeth.