The Twelve-Mile Straight by Eleanor Henderson

Author:Eleanor Henderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-09-12T04:00:00+00:00

Twenty

“You can thank me for that pie,” the white Smith said to the black one. He squinted at Sterling with his single, sky blue eye. “My grammy sent it for me special.”

The latrine had been finished and they were putting it to use, as Crow had suggested. Around their ankles were their striped pants and their chain, the ball hanging out the privy door like a watchdog. Sterling thought it must have been a white man invented the two-seater so he could have another man to talk to, even when he cleared his bowels.

“I left her a message, like smoke signals, like the Indians done. Like the Hardy Boys. You know who the Hardy Boys is, don’t you? Can’t you read?”

Sterling shook his head, and Freddie shook his. “They’s adventure boys. They do secret codes and such. Anyway I left my grammy a secret code. Know what I done?”

Sterling was paging through an issue of Progessive Farmer, which he indeed could not read but it was something for the men to put their eyes on before using it to wipe their behinds.

“She used to sing me a hymn when I was a boy.” Now Freddie raised his voice up big and sang, “‘Crown Him with many crowns! The lamb upon His throne!’”

They both took stock of where they were sitting and Sterling shook his head and laughed despite himself and Freddie laughed so hard he had to spit. “We’s just lambs on our thrones, ain’t we? Boy howdy!” He spit again in the dirt they’d just dug. “You know that one, Blacksmith? ‘Crown Him with many crowns’?”

Sterling shook his head.

“My grammy, she used to sing it to me while she made me a crown out of flowers. They was them little yellow flowers like daisies, but with black eyes? They grown all up on the hill of the mill village.”

“Black-eyed Susan,” Sterling couldn’t help but say, and by the time he said it he was sorry he had, because Ketty had grown them.

“That’s them. She used to make me a whole bunch of crowns from black-eyed Susans. And she would put the crowns on my head and sing ‘Crown Him with many crowns’ and call me her lamb. Boy howdy, every boy should have him a grammy like that. You remember last week when we was back in the mill village, cutting back that ditch weed?”

Sterling nodded. It seemed like a long time ago and far off.

“They was all them black-eyed Susans on the hill, and I made up three little crowns, tiny as like to fit on a kitty cat, and I put em in the mailbox.”

“What mailbox?” Sterling said.

“My grammy’s mailbox. We wasn’t but right acrost the street from her house.”

“Thas her house on the hill there?”

“Thas my house. Ain’t I told you it was?”

Sterling put down the magazine. His stomach hurt all of a sudden.

“I knew she’d know it was me. I seen her on the porch watching all of us, but she didn’t see me back. Boy, I’m just about as clever as Joe Hardy.

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