Chinaberry

Chapter Seventeen | Nino

sunday. quiet. still. Dad-o had driven away after breakfast. A telephone call had alerted him to meet at mid-morning a representative of a Dallas packinghouse to work out a contract for next year’s feeder calves. Those now being finished off were spring-dropped, had been full-fed during the summer in dry lot, and within the month would be trucked to a Katy Railroad siding. They were under contract before birth. In the absence of Dad-o, as by premonition, Blunt appeared in the yard to watch after me. Lurie called her sister to come spend the day; Velvet’s husband had delivered her and departed . From where I stood by the Osage fence, I could hear their voices though not comprehend their words. Today I didn’t peer into the Osage bushes, which were so thick and interwoven a chicken couldn’t penetrate them. This I had done several days past, thinking to see what might be nesting or hiding, and had upset Lurie. There I had spied a pair of toy wheels separated by a spindle. Rusty as they were, the wheels spun when I stroked the rims. When I showed them to Lurie, she threw up her hands. “Where did you find them?” she asked, obviously disturbed. I told her. Nino C H A P T E R seventeen 127 CH IN ABE R R Y She held them as if they might break. Then, she said, “Don’t tell your Dad-o. It will worry him. He wouldn’t sleep a wink the whole night.” I assured her I wouldn’t. There was no need to tell me this was from a toy belonging to the child Johnnes. I guessed the fate of the wheels. They were handed to Angelica, who opened the parlor door, deposited them, and locked it again. Walking along the hedge with a rubber ball in my hands, eyes straight ahead, I wondered if I could hide from Blunt. While I couldn’t see him, I knew he had me in sight. Dad-o had told me of his and Jack’s efforts to outwit Blunt during boyhood. They had never succeeded. “You can’t hide from an Indian,” was his statement. With nothing else to do, I wandered about, planning a ruse and a spot wherein to disappear. My ramblings took me to the barn and beyond. I bounced the ball as I walked along. Going into one empty lot and then another, emerging on open ground beyond, I was close enough to the Martinez compound to hear children’s voices, and on arriving at the final fence, I could see the corner of a shed. The compound was the Winters family’s term for the cluster of dwellings, shacks, barns, lots, chicken houses, turkey runs, and cowsheds where the Martinez “tribe” lived, along with visiting kin and seasonal workers. The fence where I drew up was old and served no present purpose. Some of the cedar posts leaned either left or right. I turned full round, searching about, and did not see Blunt. Then I saw the heads of children peer from around a shelter and disappear . One head reappeared, came into the open, and the child advanced toward me. It was Nino, a boy my size if not my age. He had been pointed out to me once by Lurie, who saw him as a 128 J AM E S STILL possible playmate. But Nino and all the others who could drag a cotton sack down a row worked every day, daylight to dark. Except Sundays. Nino came up to the fence and stopped. He said nothing. I said nothing, not knowing what to say. I bounced the ball. We stood facing each other and yet could find no words. I threw the ball over, Nino caught it, and threw it back. We exchanged the ball, back and forth, back and forth. Presently, Nino turned and ran to the shed and came back with the iron rim of a wagon wheel. He swung it over the fence to me. He returned with another for himself. We rolled them about the empty pasture with our hands until Nino showed me how to maneuver the rims with a short stick held in hand. After a half hour, I was speeding the rims hither and yon. I felt relief—I don’t know why—to be beyond...