THE WINDSTORM PASSES

The winter I come to believe in signs and omens was the baddest old winter we'd ever seen. The winter I turned fifteen.

It had come a rare snow that year, and even rarer for East Texas, it had actually stuck to the ground and got thick. Along came the wind, colder than ever, and it turned the snow to ice. It was beautiful, like sugar and egg-white icing on a cake, but it wasn't nothing to enjoy after the excitement of first seeing it come down. I had to get out in it and do chores, and that made me wish for a lot of sunshine and a time to go fishing.

Third day after it snowed and things had gotten real icy, I was out cutting some firewood from the woodlot and I found a madman in a ditch.

I'd already chopped down a tree and was trimming the limbs off of it, waiting for Papa who was coming across the way with a cross cut so we could saw it up into firewood sizes. While I was trimming I heard a voice.

"I got a message. Get out of this ditch, I got a message."

Clutching the axe tight, I went over and looked in the ditch, and there was a man. His face was as blue as my Mama's eyes; Papa says they're so blue the sky looks white beside them, even on the sky's best day. His long, oily hair had stuck to the ground and frozen there so that the clumped strands looked like snakes or fat worms trying to find holes to crawl into. There were icicles hanging off his eyelids and he was barefoot.

I screamed for Papa. He tossed down the saw and came running as fast as he could go on that ice. We got down in the ditch, hauled the feller up, pulling out some of his frozen hair in the doing. He was wearing a baggy old pair of faded black suit pants with the rear busted out, and his butt was hanging free and bare. It was darker than his face, looked a bit like a split, overripe watermelon gone dark in the sun. His feet and hands were somewhere between the blue of his face and the blue-black of his butt. The shirt he had on was three sizes too big, and when Papa and I had him standing, the wind came a-whistling along and flapped the feller's shirt around him till he looked like a scarecrow we was trying to poke in the ground.

We got him up to the house, laid him out on the kitchen table. He looked like he'd had it. Didn't move, just laid there, eyes closed, breathing slow. Then, all of a sudden, his eyes snapped open and he shot out a bony hand and grabbed Papa by the coat collar. He pulled himself to a sitting position until his face was right even with Papa's and said, "I got a message from the Lord. You are doomed, brother, doomed to the wind 'cause it's going to blow you away." Then he closed his eyes, laid back down and let go of Papa's coat.

"Easy there," Papa said. But about that time the feller gave a shake, like he was going to have a rigor, then he went still as a turnip. Papa felt for a pulse and put his ear to the feller's chest looking for a heartbeat. From the expression on Papa's face, I could tell he hadn't found neither.

"He dead, Papa?"

"Couldn't get no deader, son," Papa said, lifting his head from the feller's chest.

Mama, who'd sort of been standing off to the side watching, came over now. "You know him, Harold?" she asked.

"Think this is Hazel Onin's boy," Papa said.

"The crazy boy?"

"I just seen him the once, but I think it's him. They had him on a leash out in the yard one summer, had this colored feller leading him around, and the boy was running on all fours, howling and trying to lift his leg to pee on things. His pants were all wet."

"How pitiful," Mama said.

I knew of Hazel Onin's crazy boy, but if he had a name I'd never heard it. He'd always been crazy, but not so crazy at first that they couldn't let him run free. He was just considered peculiar. When he was eighteen he got religion real bad, took to preaching. Then right after he turned twenty he tried to rape this little high yeller gal he was teaching some Bible verses to, and that's when the Onins throwed him in the attic room, locked and barred the windows. If he'd been out of that room since that time, I'd never heard of it till now.

I'm ashamed of it now, but when I was twelve or thirteen, me and some of the other boys used to have to walk by there on our way to and from school, and the madman would holler out from his barred windows at us, "Repent, 'cause you're all going to have a bad fall," then he'd go to singing some old gospel song, and it gave me the jitters 'cause there was an echo up there in that attic, and it made it seem there was someone else inside singing along with him. Someone with a voice as deep and trembly as Old Man Death ought to have.

Johnny Clarence used to pull his pants down, bend over and show his naked butt to the madman, and we'd follow his lead on account of we didn't want to be considered no chickens. Then we'd all take off out of there running, hoopin' and a hollerin', pulling our pants and suspenders up as we ran.

But we'd quit going there long time back, as had almost everyone in town. They moved Main Street when the railroad came through on the other side, and from then on the town built up over there. They even tore down and rebuilt the school house on that side, and there wasn't no need for us to come that way no more. We could cut shorter by going another way. And after that, I mostly forgot about the madman prophet.

"It's such a shame," Mama said. "Poor boy."

"It's a blessing, is what it is," Papa said. "He don't look like he's been eating so good to me, and I bet that's because the Onins ain't feeding him like they ought to. They figure him a shame and a curse from God, and they've treated him like it was his fault his head ain't no good ever since he was born."

"He was dangerous, Harold," Mama said. "Remember that little high yeller girl?"

"Ain't saying he ought to have been invited to a church social. But they didn't have to treat him like an animal."

"Guess it's not ours to judge," Mama said.

"Damn sure don't matter now," Papa said.

"What do you think he meant about that thing he said, Papa?" I asked. "About the wind and all?"

"Didn't mean nothing, son. Just crazy talk. Go on out and hitch up the wagon and I'll get him wound up in a sheet. We'll take him back to the Onins. Maybe they'll want to stuff him and put him in the attic window so folks can see him as they walk or ride by. Or they could charge two bits for folks to come inside and look at him. Kind of pull his arm with a string so it looks like he's waving at them."

"That's quite enough, Harold," Mama said. "Don't talk like that in front of the boy."

Papa grumbled something, went out of the room for a sheet, and I went out to the barn and hitched the mules up. I drove the wagon up to the front door, went in to help Papa carry the body out. Not that it really took both of us. He was as light as a big, empty corn husk. But somehow, the two of us carrying him seemed a lot more respectable than just tossing him over a shoulder and slamming him down in the wagon bed.

We took the body over to the Onins, and if they was broke up about it, I missed the signs. They looked like they'd just finally gotten some stomach tonic to work, and had made that long put off and desired trip to the outhouse.

Papa didn't say nothing stern to them, though I expected him to, since he wasn't short on honest words. But I figure he didn't see no need in it now.

Mrs. Onin stood in the doorway all the time, didn't come out to the wagon bed while the body was there. After Mr. Onin unwound the sheet and took a look at the madman's face, said what a sad day it was and all, he asked us if we'd mind putting the body in the toolshed.

We did, and when we got back to the wagon Mrs. Onin was waiting by it. Mr. Onin offered us a dollar for bringing the body home, but of course, Papa wouldn't take it.

Before we climbed up on the wagon, Mrs. Onin said, "He'd been yelling all morning from upstairs, saying how an angel from God wearing a suit coat and a top hat, had brought him a message he was supposed to pass on. Kept sayin' an angel was giving him a test, see if he deserved heaven after what he done to that little girl."

Papa went ahead and climbed on the wagon, took hold of the lines. With his head, he motioned me up.

"Then we didn't hear nothing no more," Mr. Onin said. "I went up there to check on him and he'd pulled the bars out of one of the windows and got out. I don't reckon how he did that, as he'd never been able to do it before, and them bars was as sturdy as the day I put them in, no rotten wood around the sills or nothing."

Papa had taken out his pocket knife and tobacco bar, and he was cutting him a chew off it. "Reckon you went right then to the sheriff to tell him your boy run off," Papa said, and there was that edge to his voice, like when he finds me peeing out back too close to the house.

"Naw," Mr. Onin said looking at the ground. "I didn't. Figured cold as he was, he'd come on back."

"Don't matter none now, does it?" Papa said.

"No," Mr. Onin said. "He's out of his misery now."

"Thems as true a words as you've spoke," Papa said.

"I'll be getting your sheet back to you," Mr. Onin said.

"Don't want it," Papa said. He clucked up the mules and we started off.

When we were out of earshot of the house, I said, "Papa, you really think they thought that crazy feller would go back because it was cold?"

"Why in hell would he want to go back to that attic? I don't reckon it was all that warm. I figure they thought he'd freeze and they'd be rid of him."

We didn't say anything else until we got home, then wasn't none of the talking about the madman or the Onins. Mama didn't even mention it after she saw Papa's face.

Just before supper, Papa went out on the porch to smoke his pipe, and I went out to the barn to toss the mules and milk cow some hay. I was out there tossing and smelling that animal smell, thinking how it reminded me of my whole life, that smell. Reminded me of Mama and Papa, warm nights with very little breeze, cold nights with the fire stoked up big and warm, late suppers, tall tales in front of the fireplace, standing on the porch or looking out the windows at the morning, noon or night, spring, summer, winter or fall. And that smell, always there, like a friend who had on some peculiar, if not bad smelling, toilet water. It was in the floorboards of the house, in the yard, thick in the barn. A smell that even now moves me backwards and forwards in time.

So there I was, throwing hay, thinking this fine life would go on forever, and all of a sudden I felt it before it happened.

I quit tossing hay, turned to look out the barn door. It was like I was looking at a painting, things had gone so still. The sky had turned yellow. The late birds quit singing and the mules and the milk cow turned their heads to look out of doors too.

Way off I heard it, a sound like a locomotive making the grade, burning that timber. Only there wasn't a track within ten miles of us. Outside the sky went from yellow to black, from still to windy. Pine straw, dust, and all manner of things began whipping by. I knew what was happening: twister.

I dropped the pitchfork, dove for the inside of an old shovel scoop mule sled, and no sooner had I hit face down and put my hands over my head, then it hit.

I caught a glimpse of a cow flying by, legs splayed like she thought she could stop the tug of the wind easy as she could stop the tug of a rope. Then the cow was gone and the sled started to move.

After that, everything started happening so quickly I'm not certain what I saw. Lots of things flying by, and I could hardly breathe. The sled might have gone as high as thirty feet, 'cause when I came down it was hard. Hadn't been for the ice, I'd probably have been driven into the ground like a cork in a bottle. But the sled hit the ice and started sliding, throwing up dirty, hard snow on either side of me. Ice pieces hit me in the face, then the sled fetched up against something solid, a stump probably, and I went flying out of it, hit the ice, whirled around and around, came to rest in that ditch where I'd found the madman.

I passed out for a while, and I dreamed. Dreamed I was in the sled again, flying through the air, and there was our house, lifting up from the ground, floor and all. It flew right past me, rising fast. In the brief instant it moved in front of me, I saw Mama. She was standing at the window. All the glass was blown out, and she was clinging to the sill with both hands. Her eyes were as big and blue as her china saucers, and her red hair had come undone and was blowing and whipping around her like a brush fire.

The house shot on up, and when I looked up to see, there wasn't nothing but whirling blackness with little chunks of wood and junk disappearing into it.

"Mama," I said, and I must have said it a lot of times, 'cause that's what woke me up. The sound of my voice calling Mama.

I tried to stand, but my ankle wasn't having it. It hurt like hell, and when I looked down, I saw my boot and sock had been ripped off by the blow, and the ankle was as big as a coiled cottonmouth snake.

I put a hand on the edge of the ditch, dug my fingers through the ice and pulled myself up, taking some of the skin off my naked foot as I did. It was so cold the flesh had frozen to the ground and it had peeled off when I moved, like sweetgum bark.

Once I was out of the ditch, I started crawling across the ice, dragging my useless foot behind me. Little chunks of skin came off my palms, so I had to get down and pull myself forward on my coat-sleeved forearms.

I hadn't gone far before I found Papa. He was sitting in his rocking chair, and in one hand he held his pipe and it was still smoking. The porch the chair had been sitting on was gone, but Papa was rocking gently in what remained of the wind. And the pitchfork I'd tossed before diving into the sled was sticking out of his chest like it had growed there. I didn't see a drop of blood. His eyes were open and staring, and every time that chair rocked forward, he seemed to look and nod at me.

Behind Papa, where the house ought to have been, wasn't nothing. It was like it hadn't never been built. I quit crawling and started crying. Did that till there wasn't nothing in me to cry, and the cold started making me so numb I just wanted to lay there and freeze at Papa's feet like an old dog. I felt like if I wasn't his killer, I was at least a helper, having tossed down the very pitchfork that had murdered him.

It started to rain little ice pellets, and somehow the pain of those things pounding on me, gave me the will to crawl toward a heap of hay that had been tossed there by the wind. By the time I got to the pile and looked back, Papa wasn't rocking no more. Those runners had froze to the ground and his black hair had turned white from the ice that had stuck to him.

I worked my way into the hay and tried to pull as much of it over me as I could. Doing that wore me out, and I fell asleep wondering about Mama, wondering what had happened to her, hoping she was alive.

The wind picked up again, took most of my hay away, but by then I didn't care. I awoke remembering that I'd had that dream about Mama and the house again. Even though I didn't have much hay on me, it didn't seem so cold anymore. I figured it was either warming up, or I was getting used to it. Course, wasn't neither of them things. I was freezing to death, and would have too, if not for Mr. Parks and his boys.

Mr. Parks was our nearest neighbor, about three miles east. It turned out he had been chopping wood when the sky turned yellow. Later he told me about it. and he said it was as strange as a blue-eyed hound dog, and unlike any twister he'd ever seen. Said the yellow sky went black, then this dark cloud grew a tail and came a-wagging out of the sky like a happy pup, the tail getting thicker as it dipped. When it touched down he figured the place it hit was right close to our farm, so he hitched up a wagon and came on out.

It was slow going for him and his two boys, on account of the ice and them having to stop now and then to clear the road of blown-over trees. But they made it to our place about dark, and Mr. Parks said first thing he saw was Papa in that rocker. He said it was like the stem of Papa's pipe was pointing to where I lay, half in, half out of some hay.

They figured me for dead at first, I looked so bad. But when they saw I was alive, they loaded me in the wagon, covered me in some old feed sacks and a couple half-wet blankets and started out of there.

Turned out that foot of mine was broke bad. The doctor came out to the Parks place, set it, and didn't charge me a cent. He said he owed Papa from last fall for a bushel of taters, but I knew that was just a friendly lie. Doc Ryan hadn't never owed nobody nothing.

Mr. and Mrs. Parks offered me a place to stay after the funeral, but I told them I'd go back to our place and try to make a go of it there.

Johnny Parks, who used to whip the hell out of me twice a week on them weeks when we both managed to go a full week to school, made me a pair of solid crutches out of hickory, and I went to Papa's funeral on them. Mama, as if there was something to my dream, wasn't never found, and for that matter, they couldn't hardly find no pieces of the house. There was plenty of barn siding around, but of the house there was only a few floorboards, some wood shingles and some broken glass. Maybe it's silly, but I like to thgink that old storm just come and got her and hauled her off to a better place, like that little old gal in that book The Wizard of Oz.

Mr. Parks made Papa a tombstone out of a piece of river slate, chiseled some nice words on it:

HERE LIES HAROLD FOGG,

KILT BY A TORNADER,

AND HERE LIES THE MEMRY OF GLENDA FOGG

WHO WAS CARRIED OFF BY

THE SAME TORNADER

AND WASN'T NEVER FOUND.

NOT EVEN THE PIECES.

Beneath that was some dates on when they was born and died, and a line about them being survived by one son, Buster Fogg, meaning me, of course.

Over the protest of Mr. and Mrs. Parks, I had them take me out to the place and I set me up a tent there. They left me a lot of food and some hand-me-down clothes from their boys, then they went off saying they'd be back to check on me right regular. Mr. Parks even offered me some money and the loan of his mule, but I said I had to think on it.

This tent Mr. Parks had given me was a good one, and I managed to get around well enough on my crutches to gather barn siding and use what tools I could find to build a floor in it. I could have got Mr. Parks and his boys to do that for me, but I couldn't bring myself to ask them to, not after all they'd done. And besides, I had my pride. Matter of fact, that was about all I had right then. That and the place.

Well, it took me a couple of days what should have taken a few hours, but I got the tent fixed up real good and cozy finally. But it wasn't no replacement for the house and Mama and Papa. I'd have even liked to have heard them fussing over how much firewood Papa should have laid in, which was one of them things he was always a little lazy on, and was finally glad to pass most of the job along to me. I could just imagine Mama telling him as she looked at the last few sticks of stove wood, "I told you so."

On the morning after I'd spent my first night on my finished floor, I got out to take a real good look at things, and see what I could manage on crutches.

There were dead chickens lying all about, like feather dusters, pieces of wood and one mule lying on his back, legs sticking up in the air like a table blowed over.

Well, wasn't none of this something I hadn't already seen, but now with the flooring in, and my immediate comfort attended to, I found I just couldn't face picking up dead chickens and burning a mule carcass.

I went back inside the tent and felt sorry for myself, as that's all there was to do in there, besides eat, and I'd done that till I was about to pop. I didn't even have a book to reread, as all them had got blowed away with the house.

About a week went by, and I'd maybe got half the chickens picked up and tossed off in the ditch by the woodlot, and gotten the mule burned to nothing besides bones, when this slick-looking feller in a buckboard showed up.

"Howdy, young feller," he said, climbing down from his rig. "You must be Buster Fogg."

I admitted I was, and up close I saw that snazzy black suit and narrow brim hat he had on were even snappier than they'd looked from a distance. The hat and suit were as black as fresh charcoal and the pants had creases in them sharp enough to cut your throat. And the feller was all smiles. He looked to have more teeth than Main Street had bricks.

"Glad I caught you home," he said, and he took off his hat and held it over his chest as if contemplating a prayer.

"Whats it I can do for you?" I asked. "Maybe you'd like to come in the tent, get out of this cold."

"No, no. What I have to say won't take but a moment. My name is Purdue. Jack Purdue. I'm the banker from town."

Well, right off I knew what it was and I didn't want to hear it, but I knew I was going to anyway.

"Your father's bill has come due, son, and I hate it something awful, and I know it's a bad time and all, but I'm going to need that money by about...," he stopped for a moment to look generous, "... say noon tomorrow. Least half."

"I ain't got a penny, Mr. Purdue," I said. "Papa had the money, but everything got blowed away in the storm. If you could just give some time-"

He put his hat on and looked real sad about things, almost like it was his farm he was losing.

"I'm afraid not, son. It's an awful duty I got, but it's my duty."

I told him again about the money blowing away, how Papa had saved it up from selling stuff during the farm season, doing odd jobs around and all, and that I could do the same, providing he gave my leg time to heal so I could get a job. Just to work on his sympathy some, I then went on to tell him the whole horrible truth about how Papa was killed and Mama blowed away like so much outhouse paper, and when I got through I figured I'd told it real good, 'cause his eyes looked a little moist.

"That," he said, not hardly able to speak, "is without a doubt, the saddest story I've ever heard. And of course I knew all about it, son, but somehow, hearing it from you, the last survivor of the Fogg family, makes it all the more dreadful."

He kind of choked up there on the end of his words, and I figured I had him pretty good, so I throwed in how us Foggs had pride and all, and that I'd never let a due bill go unpaid, if he'd just give me the time to raise the money.

Well, he told me he was tore all to hell up about it, but business was business, sad story or not. And as he wiped some of the water out of his eyes with the back of his hand, he told me he would give me until tomorrow evening instead of noon, because he reckoned someone who'd been through what I had deserved a little more time.

"But that ain't enough," I said.

"I'm sorry, son, that's the best I can do, and that goes against the judgement of the bank. I'm sticking my neck out to do that."

"You are the bank, Purdue," I said. "Who you fooling? It ain't me. We all know you're the bank."

"I understand your grief, your torment," he said, just like one of the characters from some of them Dime Novels Papa bought from time to time, "but business is business."

"You said that."

"Yes I did." With that, Mr. Purdue turned and walked back to his buckboard. He called out to me as I stood there leaning defeated on my crutches. "I tell you, son, that is the saddest story I've ever heard, and I've heard some. Tragic. This will hang over my head from here on out, right over my head," he showed me exactly where it would be hanging with his hand, "until my dying day."

He stood there with one foot up on the buckboard step a moment, looking as downcast as a young rooster without any hens, then he climbed up and cracked the whip gently over the heads of his horses. There must have been some pretty heavy tears in his eyes as he left, 'cause when he turned the buckboard around, the left wheels rolled right over Papa's grave.

My farming days were over before they even got started. And I'll tell you, right then and there, I decided I wasn't going to pick up another dead chicken to make the place look nicer. In fact, I went over to the ditch, got the ones I throwed down there out and chunked them around sorts like they had been. Then I went back to my tent and wished I hadn't burned that old dead mule up.

The smartest thing to do would have been to go on over to Mr. and Mrs. Parks, even if it did take me all damned day on them crutches, but I just couldn't. Us Foggs have our pride. I decided to set out for town, get me a job there, make my own way. Surely there was something I could do till my leg healed up and I got me a solid job.

I figured if I started early, like tomorrow morning, I could maybe make town by nightfall, crutches or not. I'd probably fall down and bust it a few times, but that didn't matter none.

Well, as I said, us Foggs are proud, and maybe just a little bit stupid, so next morning I set out as planned, leaving the tent behind, carrying with me some hard bread, jerked meat, and dried fruit in a sack.

I must have fell down a half a dozen times before I got to the road, but then I could crutch along better, 'cause there was a lot less ice there.

By noon my underarms were so sore from the rubbing of them crutches that they were bleeding and making blisters that kept popping as I went.

Stopping about then, I sat down on a rock and my coattails, ate me some bread and jerky, and fretted things over. While I was fretting, I heard this sound and looked up.

It was bells on a harness I had heard, and the harness was attached to eight big mules pulling a bright red wagon driven by a big black man wearing a long, dark coat and a top hat. When the sun hit his teeth they flashed like a pearl-handled revolver.

As the wagon made a little curve in the road, I got a glimpse at the side, and I could see there was a cage fixed there, balancing out the barrels of water and supplies on the other side.

At first I thought what was in the cage was a deformed colored feller, but when it got closer, I seen it was some kind of animal covered in hair. It was about the ugliest, scariest damned thing I'd ever seen.

Right then I was feeling a might less proud than I had been that morning, so I got them crutches under me and hobbled out into the road and waved one hand at the man on the wagon.

The wagon slowed and pulled alongside of me. The driver yelled, "Whoa, you old ugly mules," and the harness bells ceased to shake.

I could see the animal in the cage real good now, but I still couldn't figure on what it was. There was some yellow words painted above the cage that said THE MAGIC WAGON, and to the right of the cage was a little sign with some fancy writing on it that read:

Magic Tricks, Trick Shooting, Fortune Telling, Wrestling Ape, Side Amusements, Medicine For What Ails You, And All At Reasonable Prices.

Sounded pretty good to me.

"You look like you could use a ride, white boy," the big colored man said.

"Yes sir, I could at that," I said.

"You don't say yes sir to a nigger." I turned to see who had said that, and there was this feller standing in faded, red long johns and moccasins with blond hair down to his shoulders and a skimpy little blond mustache over his lip. He had his arms crossed, holding his elbows against the cold. He'd obviously come out of the back of the wagon, but he'd walked out so quiet I hadn't even known he was there till he spoke.

When I didn't say nothing, he added, "This here's my wagon. He just works for me. I say who rides and who don't, and I say you don't."

"I got some jerky, canned taters and beans I can trade for a ride, and I'll sit up there on the seat."

"If you was riding, you sure would," the blond man said. "But you ain't riding." He turned back to the wagon and I noticed the flap on his long Johns was down. I snickered just a little, and he turned around to stare at me. He had eyes like a couple of gun barrels, cold and ugly grey. "I don't need no beans or sweet taters," he said suddenly, then he started back to the wagon.

"He can ride up here with me if he's got a mind to," said the colored man.

The white feller spun around and came stomping back. "What did you say?"

"I said he could ride up here with me if he's got a mind to," the colored man said, moving his lips real slow like, as if he was talking to an idiot. "It's too cold for a boy to be out here, especially one on crutches."

"You're getting mighty uppity for a nigger," the white feller said. "Mighty uppity for a nigger who works for me."

"Maybe I is," the colored feller said. "And it worries me something awful, Mister Billy Bob. I get so worried abouts it I can't get me no good sleep at night. I wake up wondering if Mister Billy Bob is put out with me, and if I truly is getting uppity."

Mister Billy Bob pointed his finger at the colored feller and shook it. "Keep it up, nigger. Just keep it up and you're going to wake up with a crowd of buzzards around you. Hear?"

"I hear," the colored feller said. It was almost a yawn. Billy Bob started back for the wagon again, gave me a glimpse of his exposed butt, turned and came back. He shook his finger at the colored feller again. "Albert," he said, "you and me, we going to have to have us a serious Come To Jesus meeting, get some things straight. Like who's the nigger and who ain't."

"I do need some pointers on that, Mister Billy Bob. I get a trifle confused sometime."

Billy Bob stood there for a moment like he was going to stare Albert down off the wagon seat, but he finally gave it up. "All right, you," he said to me. "You can ride, but it's going to cost you them beans and taters, hear?"

I nodded.

This time Billy Bob turned and went into the wagon, the moon of his butt my last sight of him, the slamming of the door my last sound.

I turned and looked up at Albert. He was leaning down with a big hand extended. Just before I took it, I got me another look at the critter in the cage, and when he looked at me he peeled back his lips to show his teeth, like maybe he was smiling.

When I was on the seat beside Albert, he said, "That Mister Billy Bob's going to need to get them buttons fixed on the seat of his drawers, ain't he?"

We laughed at that.

After we got moving good, Albert said, "You keep them beans and taters, boy. Taters upset my stomach, and beans they make Mister Billy Bob fart something awful. Just ain't no being around him."

"That's good of you to let me keep them," I said, 'cause I ain't got no beans or taters. All I got is some hard bread and some jerked meat."'

Albert let out a roar, like that was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. I could tell right then and there he didn't have no real respect for Billy Bob.

"That critter in the cage?" I asked, taking a long shot. "Is that some kind of bear what caught on fire or something?"

Albert laughed again. "Naw, it ain't no bear. That there is a jungle ape, comes from the same place as all us colored. They calls him a chimpanzee. Name's Rot Toe on account of he got him some kind of disease once and one of the toes on his right foot rotted off. Least that's what the feller who sold him to Billy Bob said."

I remembered the sign I'd read on the side of the wagon. "Wrestling Ape," I said.

"There you got it;" Albert said.

I found a place for the crutches and the food bag, then I leaned back with my hands in my lap.

"You look a might bushed, little peckerwood. You wants to lay your head against my shoulder to rest, you go right ahead."

"No thanks," I said. But we hadn't gone too far down the road when I just couldn't keep my eyes open no more and I realized just how tired I really was. I lolled my head on Albert's big shoulder. I could smell the clean wool of his coat. And wasn't no time until I was asleep.