Tuesday Voice: Farewell

By Ed Rogers

[Sequel to “Tadpole in Winter”]

My family moved to Harlingen, Texas, and the times I came to my grandparents’ farm were getting fewer and farther apart. I was thirteen when I returned for my last full summer of innocence.
    Herbert was fourteen and a man of the world now. For the first time there seemed to be a distance between us.
    We were happy to be together once more and were determined not to let anything from outside of our little world get in the way of the fun that was ahead.
    It was summertime on the farm, and this meant working in the field. I didn’t have to work, but if I wanted to be around Herbert and Willie, I would have to be out in the fields where they were.
    It was hard, hot, and dirty, but I’m glad I had the experience. It made the work I performed later in life feel easy.
    One day, while we were coming back from the bottonm fields with the mules, I had to take a number two and stepped behind a tree. I took care of my business and came back to the road. “Did you cover it up?” asked Herbert.
    “There’s no one out here,” I said. “Why should I worry about covering my crap?”
    “Man, don’t you know what can happen to you if someone finds it?”
    “How is anyone going to know it was me that took that dump?”
    “It don’t matter who took it,” said Herbert. “Someone can find it and they are going to take some of it and put it in a knothole.”
    “What are you talking about?” I said. Nobody’s going to be picking up someone else’s poop.”
    “That’s what you think,” Herbert said. “I know for a fact folks be looking for places where people crap.
    “They put it in a knothole in the tree. The people who take that crap, they be plugged up until they find that knothole and open it up,” Herbert swore.
    “I don’t believe that. I would have heard of it before now.”
    “All I know is I seen it happen to our uncle. It almost killed him before he find that knothole with his poop in it.” Herbert punched Willie in the arm. “Tell him, Willie. You seen it.”
    “Herbert be right about that. Uncle Esell almost died.”
    I watched Willie’s eyes as he validated the story and then looked at Herbert. I was trying to find something in their faces that would tell me they were lying. I saw nothing. They believed the story as surely as the one about snakes not biting underwater.
    “All right, I’ll cover it up,” I said, “but I don’t believe anyone can stop you up like that.”

Some things on the farm just never changed. The belief in things that go boo in the night was one of them. Snakes not biting underwater and constricted bowels by way of a knothole were two more.
    The next day we were on the way back from working in the field when we came upon a possum that had died and was lying in the middle of the path. Herbert and I walked on either side and Willie jumped over the body. As we walked on down the path toward the house, I turned to Herbert and said, “I’m glad it was Willie who jumped over that possum and not me. I don’t want the Devil to come looking for me.”
    Herbert picked right up on what I was doing and said, “With Willie being so young, maybe the Devil will go easy on him. I’m just happy I didn’t have to do it.”
    “What do you mean?” Willie cried. “The Devil’s going to do something to me?”
    I looked at Willie and shook my head sadly, “You did steal that poor possum’s soul.”
    “How did I steal any soul? I never touched that possum!”
    “Sure, but you jumped over the body, and everybody knows, the spirit will enter a person if he jumps over it. So now the Devil is looking for that spirit and you got it.”
    “Herbert, that is not true, is it?” Willie tearfully asked.
    Herbert said, “All I know is if I was you I would say some real good prayers before I went to bed tonight. That’s when the Devil comes...after you go to sleep.”
    “I don’t want the Devil to come after me,” Willie whispered under his breath.
    I went to my grandparents house to clean up and eat, and met back up with Herbert later that night.

“Herbert,” I said, “after you go to bed tonight I’m going to come down and scratch on the window. Wake Willie up and tell him it’s the Devil come to get him.”
    By 9 o’clock everybody was in bed. Five o’clock next morning came soon, and I would still have been in bed but I had some devil work to do.
    With a very big flashlight, I headed out toward the Gillums’ house. It was very dark, the moon hadn’t come up yet, and I was having a hard time walking. I didn’t want to turn on the light, in case Willie might see it.
    I came up to Herbert and Willie’s window. Then I opened my mouth very wide, stuck the flashlight in, and turned the light on. The reflection of a red-faced demon shone in the window.
    I begin scratching on the window and moaning, “Willie, Willie.” By the third “Willie,” there came a scream loud enough to wake the dead.
    Then all hell broke loose. Willie flew over Herbert and headed for Mr. Jack’s room.
    I guess he landed right in the middle of Mr. Jack and Mrs. Rosa. He was screaming, “The Devil’s come to get me, Momma! The Devil’s come to get me!”
    Mr. Jack was hollering, “What the hell are you doing in here, boy? Have you lost your mind?”
    Willie cried, “Papa, the Devil is at my window and he’s come to get me.”
    I knew it was time for me to get the hell out of there. I hadn’t planned on involving Mr. Jack in the prank.
    As I was heading out, I heard Mr. Jack throw Willie out of bed and tell him to get back in his room before he beat the Devil out of him.
    Herbert told me the next day that Willie came back in and asked Herbert if he had seen the Devil.
    Herbert told him he had been asleep and didn’t see anything, but he was not surprised. “You are just lucky he didn’t get you.”
    Willie died at a young age. I don’t know if he ever knew it was me at his window that night. If not, I guess it made for a good story to tell.
    It was funny as hell at the time but now I do feel a little guilty about what I did.
    Although I still have to smile when I think of Willie landing in that bed with Mr. Jack.

Summer was ending, and it wouldn’t be long before I would be heading back to Texas.
    It had been a great summer. We had a corncob fight with some of my cousins, which turned into a cow-pie throwing contest. We went to the colored church to have an end-of-summer cook out. I was always the only white person there. I never gave a second thought to it and I guess no one else did either. The highlight of the summer came one Friday night in August. I don’t know where Willie was but Herbert and I were laying in the cotton on the wagon next to the house.
    We had been looking up at the stars and talking about far-off places, when something from the house caught our attention. As I looked over at the window I couldn’t believe my eyes. There standing up in a washtub, looking right at us, was Herbert’s older sister. I had never seen a grown woman naked before and I couldn’t look away. Herbert said, “Let’s get down and go to the window.”
    We eased up beside the window, and then moved our heads in front of the pain to see her. Ann was her name. She hollered, “Mama, Herbert and Eddie are looking at me through the window.”
    Like two lightning bolts, we were out across the cotton field. We stayed out there for some time even when we heard Mrs. Rosa calling us.
    We saw a car pull up to the house. Herbert said, “We can go back now; that’s Ann’s boyfriend. She’s not going to say anything while he’s there.”
    We got back up in the wagon without attracting anybody’s attention. We had been there for about thirty minutes when Ann and her boyfriend came out on the porch. Herbert and I buried ourselves as deep in that cotton as we could.
    He was saying, “Come, baby, you know you want to do it.”
    Ann said, “We can’t do it here. My Daddy would kill you and me both if he was to catch us.”
    “Come on,” he said, “we can get in that cotton wagon and nobody will see us.”
    Herbert and I knew that if they got in the wagon, we were dead.
    Ann said, “No! Let’s get away from the house.” She eased back in the door and came back with a blanket. Taking his hand, they headed out across the field.
    I looked at Herbert and said, “Let’s follow them.”
    There was a huge black coat hanging on a nail by the back door. Herbert got the coat and said, “We can cover ourselves with this and they’ll not be able to see us.”
    It was slow going, because we had to stay low to keep anyone from seeing us.
    We could hear them just ahead, so we got on all fours and put the coat over us.
    As we inched forward it sounded like they might be making love, at least they were making some very strange sounds.
    All of a sudden, we found ourselves in the same row of cotton as Ann and her boyfriend.
    He was on top of her and couldn’t see us, but Ann sure could. She started hitting him and screaming, “Get up, get up, there’s a bear coming at us.”
    He said, “You better shut up and lay your ass back down, woman. There ain’t any bear out here.”
    She began kicking and hitting him, still screaming about a bear coming.
    Herbert and I didn’t know what to do. We wanted to run but couldn’t move.
    Ann finally kicked him off her, and he looked right at us. He jumped up with a yell of pure terror and took off running to the house, passing Ann on the way.
    Herbert and I did a retreat on all fours out across the cotton field.
    We circled back around and walked up the road from my grandparents’ house. Everybody and their brother had come out of the house with guns and flashlights. Mr. Jack, the man from on top of the hill who made home-brew, and Ann’s boyfriend—they all went looking for a bear that had tried to kill Ann and her boyfriend.
    That is one of those stories Herbert and I kept to ourselves.

It was raining and there was nothing to do but sit around the old shed. I would be going home to Texas at the end of the week. It was kind of a sad time. Herbert and Willie and I talked of things we had done over the summer and plans of things we were going to do next year.
    Herbert pulled a Camel cigarette out of his pocket and said, “Ya’ll want to smoke this?”
    “Sure,” we said, “why not?”
    Herbert fired it up and passed it around. We had puffed on everything from grape vine to roll-your-own tobacco that Herbert stole from Mr. Jack. I took a puff and handed it to Willie. I let the smoke run out of my mouth and slowly float upward.
    When it got back to Herbert he said, “Watch this.” He took a big pull on the Camel, opened his mouth and there was no smoke. Then he exhaled and out came the smoke.
    I said, “Wow! When did you learn to do that?”
    Herbert said, “It’s easy,” and handed me the cigarette. “Just take a big mouth full of smoke then inhale.”
    Did I tell you it was raining that day? That fact was becoming very important.
    I got my mouth full of smoke and did a deep inhale. I couldn’t breathe. I fell out into the pouring rain and gasped for air.
    I could hear Herbert shout, “Breathe, Eddie, breathe. You’ll be all right.”
    Willie was jumping up and down crying, “Herbert, you done killed Eddie, you done killed him!”
    I truly believe if it hadn’t been for that rain hitting me in the face I would have died.
    It would be some time before I did that again. Unfortunately, I became very good at inhaling.
    That was the summer I tasted my first home-brew, saw my first naked woman, and smoked my first cigarette. Overall, as far a learning sinful ways, it had been a good summer.

It was the last summer we would spend together as brothers. The next time I saw Herbert I was on my way overseas and he was in the middle of the civil rights movement. We didn’t have much to say to each other, the world had finally caught up with us and I don’t think either of us liked what we saw.
    Twenty years later I caught up with Herbert. He was married and had nine kids. Willie, Ann, Mr. Jack, and Mrs. Rosa were all dead. Herbert was the only one of his family still alive. We spent the afternoon drinking beer and talking about those days on the farm. It was a wonderful afternoon and the last time we spoke.
    My uncles are all gone now and the farm is gone also, but I can still see three young boys, two black and one white, running out across that cotton field yelling and laughing like a bunch of crazed Indians. Sitting under the big oak tree in my front yard, I hear the wind blowing through the leaves and sometimes the sound carries me back to Tadpole Creek. In the wind, I hear the laughter and the splashing of water as three children of the soil play on a warm summer day.
    The Beavers have dammed up Tadpole Creek and flooded the pasture where we camped and played. My family is all gone now, and my cousin Chuck sold the farm.

[Editor's Note: This concludes the set of stories about the author's times with his friends Herbert and Willie Gillum.]
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Copyright © 2014 by Ed Rogers

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