Fear, page 5
When the vacant lot came to its end, Jeb pulled himself up over the board fence and landed lightly on the other side. Buckshot was waiting for him at the curb, having relieved himself on the tire of a Chevrolet pickup truck. The dog lowered his leg and followed closely at his master’s heels. A few last drops of pee dotted the hot sidewalk like the trail from a leaky fuel pump, and then quickly evaporated.
Making his way briskly from one patch of shade to another, Jeb walked down Willow Drive. He passed Pile’s Texaco with its greasy repair bays and Fire Chief gasoline pumps. Up ahead was the big gray building that housed the Pikesville shirt factory on one side of the street, while his destination, Holt’s Feed and Farming Equipment set on the other, with its two grain silos and a fenced-in yard of tractors, sowers, and other equipment. Further on, where Willow petered out into a dead-end, stood the train depot next to the railroad tracks. It had been nearly two years since Jeb last stood on its boarded walkway. That was when his father had returned home, prematurely, from the War. Jeb remembered that day clearly; the coal-burning L&N locomotive, Grandma holding his hand a little too tightly, and his father stepping down out of a passenger car, his duffel bag slung over his broad shoulder. Jeb also recalled the moment when Sam Sweeny had grinned goofily and stared straight at him with big, dumb eyes, recognition failing to surface when he looked at his one and only son.
Jeb drove the sad memories from his mind and continued on. Up ahead, next to the loading dock of Holt’s, was parked the Sweeny’s’ flatbed wagon, with a single, gray mule tethered to the front. The Sweeny’s were one of the few farm families in Pikesville that still used a wagon for doing chores and taking trips to town. There were several good reasons for that. Grandma had never learned to drive a car, Jeb was much too young to handle a vehicle, and Sam had lost whatever ability he had possessed for driving in that foxhole on the German front.
“Hey, Jeb!” called a rumbling, childlike voice from the direction of the wagon. “Hey there!”
Jeb looked to where a big, lumbering man of thirty-eight sat on the open tailgate of the wagon. He wore a blue chambray shirt, denim britches, and scuffed army boots. He waved excitedly at the boy and hopped down off the flatbed, grinning benevolently as usual. Jeb smiled back, although it was hard to do so sometimes. His father’s features were the same as they had been before the War—wavy black hair topping a handsome, tanned face. It was the eyes that were strikingly different. The intelligence, rural savvy, and plain old common horse sense that had sparkled there before his return home were gone. Now the childlike innocence of a five-year-old gleamed from those soft brown eyes.
“Sorry I’m late, Sam,” said Jeb. “But Mr. Drewer had a shop full of folks today and I had to wait for a spell.” It made Jeb ache a little inside to call his father by his first name, but he knew that it was much less confusing for Sam that way. Jeb understood what had happened to his father while he was fighting the Nazis back in Germany; how an enemy shell had landed in the middle of a foxhole, killing most of the men in his father’s infantry unit and giving Sam something called “shell-shock.” The concussion from that explosion had damaged his father’s brain somehow and erased all he had known before that fateful moment. Therefore, upon his arrival home, Sam Sweeny had regarded Grandma and Jeb more as friendly strangers than family. His love for them was genuine, but he regarded Jeb more like his little brother than his son. Although it hurt Jeb, he had finally learned to accept Sam on similar terms. Two years had passed and Sam had not improved during that time. It was clear to see that the man that had been his father was lost forever.
“I’ve been waiting for you, Jeb,” said Sam. “See, I loaded the wagon up with the chicken feed, just like you told me to. I even paid Mr. Holt and got the right change back this time, I surely did!”
“That’s real good, Sam,” said Jeb. “I’m right proud of you.”
Those few words of encouragement made Sam Sweeny grin even more broadly, if that was humanly possible.
Jeb regarded the big man curiously. “Now, I ain’t never seen you so fired up about loading feed sacks before. Is there something else you’re excited about? Maybe something you wanted to show me?”
Sam nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, Jeb! Yeah, something really swell! It’s ’round back here. Come on, Jeb. Follow me!”
“Okay, Sam,” said Jeb. He looked up at the open door of the loading dock and saw a couple of Holt’s workers standing there, chewing toothpicks and making snide comments to one another. Jeb felt the heat of shame begin to creep up the back of his neck, but he quickly fought the emotion off. He shot the snickering men a dirty look, then, leaving Buckshot in the shade beneath the wagon, followed Sam to the rear of the feed store.
Behind the building lay a clutter of stray boards, empty nail kegs, and empty packing crates. When Jeb turned the corner, he found Sam kneeling next to one of the open crates, which had “40-WEIGHT MOTOR OIL” stenciled across the side in black ink. “What is it, Sam?” he asked. “What’ve you got there?”
“Something swell, Jeb,” said Sam excitedly. “Come and look!”
Jeb stepped up and looked over Sam’s shoulder. Inside the wooden crate, nestled in a bed of brown grass and chewed paper, lay a nest of baby mice. There were perhaps seven or eight of the newborn rodents. They squirmed and peeped, tiny things about as big as Jeb’s thumb, bright pink with a light coat of gray fur on their heads and backs. The mice were blind; their eyes not yet open to the world around them.
“Look, Jeb!” said Sam with a big grin. “It’s mouses! Baby mouses!”
“Mice,” corrected the ten-year-old, although he knew it was pointless to do so. Sam tended to forget almost anything you tried to teach him. He might remember for ten or fifteen minutes, but after that he would be saying or doing the same old thing again.
“Yeah,” said Sam. “Ain’t they pretty?”
Jeb couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah, Sam, they are.” He watched as the man reached out with a calloused hand that was strong enough to crush walnuts between thumb and forefinger. “Now, don’t go touching them, Sam. It ain’t right to.”
Sam looked over his shoulder at Jeb, perplexed. “But why not, Jeb? I just wanted to pet ’em a little while.”
“I know that, but remember what I told you about baby animals? If you touch them after they’re first born, you’ll leave a man-scent on them. Then their mama will smell it and won’t have nothing to do with them. She’ll stop suckling them and they’ll starve to death. Either that or she’ll end up eating them.”
“But why would their mama do something awful like that?” asked Sam.
Jeb shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just a critter’s way sometimes.”
Sam stared at the baby mice for a moment, and then looked back at Jeb, his brown eyes pleading. “Jeb … can we take ’em home with us? Please, Jeb, can we?”
Jeb hated it when Sam asked something of him that he couldn’t possibly agree to. “Afraid not, Sam,” he said. “I don’t think their mama would like that. And I don’t think Grandma would like it much, either, do you?”
Sam’s brow creased as his weakened mind tried to find a plausible solution. “We could find their mama,” he said slowly. “Yeah, we could find ’er and take ’er with us. And when we got home, we could hide ’em from Grandma.”
“That wouldn’t be right, Sam,” Jeb explained. “If you hid them from Grandma, you’d be doing something dishonest. And remember what happens if you make a habit of that.”
Sam thought hard, recalling what he had learned in church the previous Sunday. “When I die, I won’t get to go to heaven to see Jesus. I’ll have to go down to the bad place and burn and scream and gnash my teeth forever, right?”
“That’s right,” said Jeb. He laid an affectionate hand on his father’s shoulder. “Now, come on and leave them mice alone. We gotta get on back to the farm. Won’t be long till suppertime.”
“All right,” said Sam. “But just let me look at ’em a minute more, okay?”
“Sure,” said Jeb. “But just for a minute.”
The boy stood there for a moment. He ignored the squirming mice in the crate, instead looking at Sam’s face. It was so full of joy and wonder that it pained Jeb just to look at it, almost to the point of bringing him to tears.
Jeb was about to pull Sam away from the nest of mice and lead him back out front to the wagon, when he sensed that someone was behind them. The boy turned to find the owner of the feed store, Harvey Holt, standing there. His beefy face was red and angry, and his shirtsleeves were rolled to his elbows. At first, Jeb was certain that Holt’s rage was focused on him and Sam. But a moment later, he discovered that was not the case.
“Where are the filthy things?” he demanded to know. “What?” asked Jeb.
“Those damned mice!” growled Harvey, his eyes livid. “One of my men said there was a nest of ’em back here!”
Before Jeb could answer, the man was stalking toward the crate that Sam crouched next to. As he grew near, Jeb saw that he held a garden hoe in one burly hand. The implement was straight off the store rack, its price tag still dangling from the crooked neck above the hickory handle.
“There they are, the little bastards!” said Harvey Holt. Roughly, he pushed past Sam with enough force to knock the kneeling man over. Sam landed on his butt in the sawdust and, confused, looked up at the fuming store owner.
“Whatcha gonna do?” he asked breathlessly when Harvey raised the hoe. “Whatcha gonna do to the mouses?”
“Gonna kill them, that’s what!” snapped Harvey. “Can’t let them grow up and get fat off my grain, now can I?”
Sam Sweeny’s face drained deathly pale and his eyes widened in horror as Holt swung the hoe overhead, and then brought it down upon the empty crate. The flat blade smashed through the flimsy wood and bore down upon the mewing tangle of tiny rodents. The edge of the hoe sliced into the bodies of the baby mice, snapping small bones and rending tender flesh. A low moan sounded in Sam’s throat as droplets of blood speckled the legs of Harvey’s cotton pants. A couple more whacks of the hoe finished the job.
“There!” said Harvey, stepping back and eyeing his handiwork proudly. “They won’t be no bother now. No sirree!”
Jeb was a little shocked at the brutality shown by Harvey Holt, but not nearly as much as Sam was. The boy watched as his father’s face, which had turned as pale as Grandma’s biscuit dough during the attack; slowly shed its expression of distress. Sam’s cheeks suddenly turned tomato red and the look of confused hurt in his dull eyes abruptly changed into hard anger. Jeb recognized that look. Sam rarely got mad about anything, but when he did, it was a frightening thing to see. It was like watching a six-foot-three, two hundred and sixty pound youngster throwing a temper tantrum.
“You shouldn’t have done it!” said Sam as he rose to his feet. “Them poor mouses … they didn’t harm you none!”
Jeb took a step forward. “Just calm yourself down, Sam. Please.”
Harvey Holt retreated a couple feet, raising the hoe in front of him. “You stay away from me, you dadblamed simpleton!” he warned. “I swear, stand clear or I’ll hit you with this hoe!”
Sam didn’t stand clear, though. Puffing like a steam engine, the man kept on coming, his eyes full of dark rage. “You killed ’em! Cut ’em all into little bitty pieces!”
Jeb opened his mouth to speak again, but the words lay frozen on his tongue just as Sam reached the owner of the feed store. Holt swung with the hoe, but it was like swatting at a red-eyed bull with a bamboo fishing pole. Sam reached out his big right hand and, pretty as you please, caught the hickory handle of that garden hoe. A second later, it was wrenched clean out of Harvey’s hands. The storekeeper let out a little yelp, then grew fearfully silent as Sam tossed the hoe aside and grabbed a fistful of the man’s shirt, starched white collar and all.
Harvey Holt was a big man; the kind whose shadow you could take a nap in if he had a mind to stand in one spot long enough. But Sam Sweeny was bigger and stronger, his muscles hardened from day after day of working the dusty acres of the Sweeny farm. With little effort, Sam tightened his grip on Harvey’s shirt and hauled him upward until his feet were dangling a good two inches from the sawdust-covered ground.
Jeb ran up to Sam, his heart beating wildly. “Now you stop that, Sam! Come on … put him down!”
Sam wasn’t listening, though. His attention was rooted to the face of the man he held at the end of his arm. “It was mean for you to do ’em like that!” he growled. “Just plain mean! I think you oughta say you’re sorry … right now.”
“Damned retard!” sputtered Harvey Holt. “Let me go!” The store owner’s face grew beet red, then took on a shade of deep purple as the hold on his collar grew even tighter. Harvey shifted his eyes to Jeb. “You’d best get this half-wit to let me go, Jeb Sweeny, or I swear I’ll go straight to Sheriff North and have him thrown into the state asylum! Don’t think that I won’t, either!”
Jeb knew that Harvey Holt was a man of his word, but still he knew only one thing would guarantee his release. “I can’t do much about it, Mr. Holt. I reckon you’d best tell him you’re sorry.”
“I’d rather rot in hell first!” gasped the man.
Sam’s outrage was stoked by the man’s cursing. “Ain’t right for you to say that word out loud, not in front of Jeb!” Sam shook his arm violently, jerking Harvey back and forth like an oversized rag doll. “Now, you do like I said. You say you’re sorry for killing them mouses and cussing in front of Jeb!”
The defiance abruptly left Harvey Holt and, suddenly, all he wanted was to be clear of the angry farmer. “All right, dammit! I’m sorry! Now let loose of me!”
An instant later, the storekeeper landed on his butt in the sawdust with a loud grunt. As Jeb rushed to Sam’s side, the owner of Pikesville’s only feed store glared at the two. “You’d best keep a leash on that imbecile, Jeb Sweeny, before he goes and hurts someone! And you keep him clear of me, too. If he lays a hand on me again, I’ll go straight to the sheriff. I promise you that!”
“He wouldn’t have really hurt you, Mr. Holt,” assured Jeb, although he wasn’t at all sure that what he said was the truth. “He’s just like a big of kid when he gets riled up. He was just throwing a little fit, that’s all.”
Harvey tugged at his shirt collar, allowing his face to return to its normal hue. “Well, I don’t rightly believe that, but I’ll let it pass … this time. Next time, I’ll have the idiot locked up!”
“Come on, Sam,” said Jeb, taking his father by the hand. “Let’s go home.”
His anger depleted, Sam nodded dumbly and allowed the ten-year-old to lead him back around the store to Willow Drive. A moment later, they were sitting on the seat of the wagon. Jeb took hold of the reins, disengaged the brake, and called for Buckshot. The dog awakened from his slumber and, seeing the wagon lurch above him, darted from underneath and jumped up into the bed. As the hound perched atop a sack of chicken feed, Jeb snapped the reins and, jerking them sharply to the right, made a U-turn in the middle of the street.
As they approached the intersection of Willow and Main, Jeb finally released a sigh of relief. Once again, Sam had escaped the threat of the county sheriff by the grace of God and the skin of his teeth. “I do declare, Sam!” he said scoldingly. “Can’t you ever stay clear of trouble when we come to town? You’d best learn to curb your temper or, I swear, I’ll leave you at home next time!”
When Sam refused to answer, Jeb turned his head and felt his heart drop a couple of inches in his chest. His father was crying. The thirty-eight-year-old man was blubbering like a baby. At first, Jeb thought he was upset over the harsh words he had just spoken. But he knew that wasn’t the case. It wasn’t shame and hurt that creased Sam’s rugged features, but sorrow and grief.
“Why’d he have to do it, Jeb?” sobbed Sam, tears streaming down his cheeks. “Why’d he have to kill them mouses? Chop ’em up and kill ’em like that?”
Jeb wanted to tell him that Holt had exterminated them in order to protect his grain; a fact that the old Sam Sweeny would have certainly understood. Jeb recalled how his father had once acted just as Holt had, killing meddlesome weasels that preyed upon their chickens or snakes that crept into the barn and spooked the hogs. But that part of Sam was gone. Now his eyes innocently saw such scavengers as nothing more than cuddly critters to be petted and cherished.
“I don’t know, Sam,” Jeb finally said as he steered the wagon southward along Main Street. “I reckon he just don’t like animals the way you do. He saw them as something harmful, instead of a nest of baby mice.”
“That still didn’t give him the right to kill ’em!” wept Sam, snot dribbling down his upper lip. “They were just babies! They couldn’t even eat his ol’ grain! They didn’t even have any teeth yet!”
“I know, Sam,” said Jeb soothingly. As he urged the mule along Main Street, the boy was aware of the attention that his father was drawing. He could feel eyes watching them as they passed, some sympathetic, while most were merely amused. Jeb began to feel his discomfort turn into embarrassment, but he remembered what Grandma Sweeny had told him; that his father’s injury was something that couldn’t be helped and wasn’t anything to be ashamed of. Jeb fought hard to convince himself that what she had said was true, but sometimes, with the whole town of Pikesville watching, it was a mighty hard thing to do.
Jeb passed the crowded shops that lined both sides of Main Street, and then pulled back on the reins when they reached the grocery. “Whoa, Nellie!” he yelled out and, reluctantly, the mule sauntered to a halt. The boy turned to the man next to him and held out his hand. “Where’s that change that was left over from the chicken feed?”
