CARELESS WEED

By Jim Finley

Friendswood TX

By summertime word gets around that Zack Tuckett is on the run, that he killed a man up in Shallowater. Charley Gates, the barber over in Knox City, is the first to hear about it. He hears it on a Lubbock radio station. The Saturday he gets the news, Charley shakes Jaris tonic out of a long-necked bottle and massages it through Nat Sudder’s hair. Nat Sudder is the mail carrier. Charley tilts back and peers at Nat’s hair through his bifocals. “Some say he killed that man on purpose, but Zack says it was a hunting accident.” Charley clicks his partial plate while working the comb and scissors. “The man’s family won’t let it be. They keep putting up this big sign saying Zack murdered the man.” Charley parts Nat’s hair in a straight line and uses the comb and his palm to smooth it down on the sides and back. Nat has thick hair and he likes for Charley to thin it out in the summertime.

Before the day’s over everybody is talking about Zack Tuckett. I’m down at Bolin’s buying a Slowpoke sucker and it’s Zack Tuckett this and Zack Tuckett that. And Sunday morning coming out of church, Nat’s wife, Agnes, with the brim of her yellow straw waving in the wind like a flag, whispers to my mother, “Something ought to be done, Cora.”

“What do you mean?” says my mother.

“The killer, Zack Tuckett. Something ought to be done about it.”

My mother gets a spiteful look. “We don’t know that. We don’t know if he’s a murderer.”

Agnes talks through her car window, “No count trash is what they are.”

On the way home my mother goes on about what Agnes Sudder said and how she may be right, that everything’s changed and the world’s not a safe place, and that it may not have been a hunting accident, that Zack Tuckett might have killed that man on purpose. I can tell all the talk is wearing Daddy out.

Down at the barn the next morning, I’m nervous. I look at the ground for a minute, then I ask him myself.

“What do you think? You think he did it?” Without looking at me, Daddy pulls a rag from his pocket and draws it across his brow.

“Go on now, Robert Charles, and get that pullet your ma wants for dinner.”

Inside the brooder house, I say almost loud enough for Daddy to hear, “I bet he did it. I bet Zack Tuckett killed that man on purpose.”

I snare a chicken, but before I wring its neck, I look a long time at the eyes and I think about how in another minute the eyes will still be open, but they won’t be seeing anything, they’ll be milky-white and this chicken will be dead, just lying dead on the ground like a piece of wood that’s rotted off the side of the barn.

Finally, I grab the pullet’s head and sling him round and round like I’m on one end of a jump rope. My blood rushes and I wonder if that’s the same feeling that comes when you shoot a man. I wonder if shooting a man is about like wringing a chicken’s neck. I watch the pullet turn back flips and squirt blood everywhere and I think about blood squirting out the holes Zack Tuckett put in that man from Shallowater.

My daddy said it last year while him and me patched the roof of the house. He takes nails from his mouth, bites off a chew of Brown Mule and squints into the wind. Running his hot eyes over the flat, desolate land, he says, “Jud, Texas, is a hard place and nothing but hard-bitten people live here.” Then he spits. My daddy’s always saying something powerful like that. He’s always saying how things are. I guess he can’t help talking that way, this place so wide open flat like it is, and the wind and the sand always blowing the days full of misery. It don’t leave room for thin talk. Especially when his patience runs dry, Daddy reaches down and rips words out of the gut of this place. “This bigger-than-God flat place at the end of the earth,” he says. “This hateful land that swallows you and cuts you off from the rest of the world, leaving you down inside yourself with a bellyful of lonesome!” He says things like this; and lots more, too. And when he does, it sounds like the bottom of heaven cracks open and God speaks.

Me, I really didn’t understand hard-bitten until Zack Tuckett moves his wife and four kids off the Cap Rock to live in the old Brownlow place. They come down my tenth summer; the same summer jumbo grasshoppers invade Stonewall County, the hottest summer I remember, the summer I turn ten. That was the year ‘51, when spring winds kicked the sky full of dirt and sucked the moisture out of the ground. The ground cracked and turned rock-hard. We lost a bull yearling to a busted leg when the ground opened up. There was nothing to do but slaughter the calf where he fell.

“This summer’s galloping right out of hell,” I hear my daddy mumble, as we pass the gasoline plant and coast over a stretch of worn-out land to a stop down from the Brownlow place. I cradle my Winchester under my arm. I don’t go nowhere without my Winchester, except maybe down to Bolin’s. Daddy says a boy ought to have a good single-shot before he gets his puberty. He makes good on his promise last Christmas. I’m thinking my Winchester might come in handy if Zack Tuckett wants to start something. The house sits back from the road and up a soft slope. The paint’s been blasted off by sandstorms.

The first thing I notice is a woman with a slobbery, baldhead baby slung on her hip. The woman has dishwater hair; all light and stringy, not really blond, just brownish like corn stalks when they take too much heat. Suddenly, two girls and a boy edge around the side of the house with their heads hanging like they’re shy. The girls have flower sack dresses.

“You leave that gun in the car,” says Daddy, as he pops the trunk of the old Packard. The chickens squawk when he grabs the cord around their feet. He starts up the slope toward the house carrying the chickens upside down. A beanpole of a man comes from the side of the house with a boy slouching a few yards behind. The boy looks about fifteen. A cur bitch slinks from under the house and collapses on the ground. Her tongue drags in the dirt. The man, taller than my daddy, walks with a hitch in his step. He wears a shabby black hat with no shape, except the brim is pulled down so it’s hard to see his eyes. But when I’m close I spot them and they’re the palest gray I’ve ever seen; paler than the morning sky before I get up, when I’m just lying in bed partly awake and partly dreaming about hunting or fishing or snatching dimes out of Daddy’s Mason jar and riding my bike down to Bolin’s to buy a red pop or an Eskimo Pie. I never knew eyes come in that color.

Daddy introduces himself. “We’re glad to have you folks as neighbors.” Tuckett doesn’t say anything. I can smell his sour sweat. Directly, Daddy holds up the chickens. “I know it ain’t much, but we want you folks to have these pullets.”

“We don’t take no handouts, mister,” says Zack Tuckett. The two men stand looking at each other for the longest. Finally, Zack Tuckett pushes his hat back and I see his face is covered with lines and whisker stubble.

“We aim to put in a garden soon’s we catch a drop of rain.” My daddy shakes his head, then Zack Tuckett says, “Sure enough dry round here. Dry everywhere.”

“Worst I can remember,” Daddy says.

“Wishing I had me a shoat or two,” says Zack Tuckett. “I’m real partial to hogs, but hogs got to have careless weed and this ground’s too thin for growing careless weed.”

I edge up to the boy. “Want to see a real Winchester?”

“Had me one up in Shallowater,” the boy says. We walk down to the car and I fetch my gun. He grabs the rifle, slips the bolt out and takes a peek. “Ain’t nothing but an old single-shot.”

“Got me a jackrabbit on the dead run yesterday,” I say. “Got him clean through the eye.” The boy takes a chew of tobacco from his pocket and works it in his mouth.

He glares at me, then says, “You’re just a damn runt.”

“I ain’t,” I say. “I got dimes to spend down at Bolin’s and I steal them. I steal dimes from my daddy every day.”

“You’re lying,” says the boy.

“No, I ain’t.”

“Then be down to Bolin’s tomorrow at noon,” he says. He spits a stream of tobacco juice on the door of the Packard and walks away.

Directly, Daddy comes back to the car carrying the chickens. Before we drive away, he mumbles, “Some people got pride enough to choke a mule.” He doesn’t see the spit trail down the door.

The next day I don’t see him until it’s too late. He comes quick out from the ditch next to Bolin’s. My throat tightens up and I lose my grit soon as he jumps me.

“You’ll do what I say,” he says, wrenching my arm up behind my back. I try not to cry. “You got the dimes?” he yells. I don’t say anything and he twists my arm until it’s about to pop out of it’s socket.

“I got dimes,” I moan through my teeth.

“Empty your pockets,” he says. The dimes land in the dust.

“Your daddy’s a killer!” I scream. The boy yanks my hair and slings me to the ground.

“Take it back!” he yells. He brings his weight down on my chest and mashes the wind out of me. I taste metal in my mouth. I spit red blood. “You got one last chance!” yells the boy. I don’t say a thing, I just think about my daddy standing in the hot sun holding them squawking chickens upside-down trying to be a good neighbor. Standing face-to-face with a killer and never blinking one eye.

“Okay,” says the boy. “Get out of them shoes.” When I do, he tosses them in the ditch. “Now start walking,” he says. The ground’s so hot I walk on my heels. I think about how grasshoppers don’t get their feet burned. Soon, we’re passed the gasoline plant and standing at the cattle guard.

“Them too,” says the boy.

“What?” I say.

“Your clothes.” He gives another yank on my hair. When I get to my underwear, I stand there.

“Them too,” he says.

“I won’t takes these off,” I say. “It’s again’ the law.” The boy takes out a six-blade camping knife and swears he’ll cut me.

After I wiggle out of my shorts, the boy points to the cattle guard. “Now get under there and lie face-up.” The boy goes and sits in the ditch and monkeys with his knife.

I lie there looking up at big iron pipes and the sun comes down hotter and hotter and I start to cry and pray to Jesus not to let any cars come, especially the big tankers from the gasoline plant. I tell Jesus I’ll stop lying and I won’t snatch any more dimes from Daddy’s Mason jar and I’ll rededicate my life if I live to Sunday. I lie there awhile, then I feel something. I feel it before I hear it.

I scream, “It’s a tanker! A tanker’s coming!”

The boy comes and stands above me. “Now what’d you say about my daddy?” I don’t answer. I squeeze my eyes shut and grind my teeth. I suck in all the air I can and make my body rock-hard. Then I yell one more time before the sound of thunder rolls down on me and I go numb with the boom and the quake and the crash.

It’s quiet now. I can’t feel the sun anymore. I don‘t know how long I’m here. Time don’t go by like it did. It goes by slow. I think how it’s like I’m partly awake and partly dreaming, just lying in the belly of a soft summer day. Then suddenly, I’m moving, floating through the air; then quickly cradled against somebody, hugged warm against somebody’s chest. I bite my lip, trying to make my mind work, trying to remember. I take in a deep breath and let it set inside me a long time. Directly, the day rushes over me and I feel the sun again. I remember Bolin’s and Slowpoke Suckers and Eskimo Pies and I hear the high buzz of grasshopper wings. Suddenly, I smell sour sweat and look up to see the palest eyes I’ve ever seen, eyes soft and gentle. And there’s deep wrinkles and whisker stubble the color of burnt grass. I swallow hard, then look again. And when I do, I see tears come up in Zack Tuckett’s eyes.

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