Chinaberry

Chapter Nineteen | Alabama, Alabama

i was back home, on our farm at the Carlisle Place, in Chambers County, Alabama. Returning in the Hudson borrowed from Anson, Ernest and I had crossed the piney scrubland of East Texas, the swamps of Louisiana, the empty cotton fields of Mississippi and Alabama, all in three and a half days. There were no breaking points. The Hudson never once went out to slow us down, as Ernest’s Model T had done on our journey west. There were no Knuckleheads to plague us with pranks and insist that we stop in one town and another so they could look about. Ernest drove all day and most of the night, drawing up in a churchyard around midnight for a couple- or three-hour snooze. He slept doubled up in the front seat, and I stretched out in the back, with the wool blanket Lurie had provided for my comfort and a cushion embroidered by her with the longhorn logo of the Bent Y Ranch under my head. I slept in my clothes, not removing them for the whole trip. I was coming home, dressed as I had gone out, in bib overalls and shoes. The overalls were new; the shoes were fresh from a Bluewater store but not broken in. In a valise provided for me were the undershorts and shirts and wash pants and pajamas Lurie had made. My Stetson hat, the smallest one the company manufactured, was in its box in the trunk, safe from the dust and grime of the road. A hamper beside it held more food than Alabama, Alabama C H A P T E R nineteen 136 J AM E S STILL we could eat: chicken fried crisp, sausage in Mason jars, canned peas and peaches and pears, and a box of cornflakes. Ernest had only to buy milk for the cereal and to kindle a fire for coffee. In his wallet, he had a bank draft made out to me, a dollar a day for every one I had spent at Chinaberry. I was being paid for helping Anson to help himself. Ernest’s haste was to meet my father’s deadline for my return to Alabama: October 31 at the latest. The deadline had arrived in a letter, and since Ernest’s Model T was not up to repeating the journey, Anson had offered us the Hudson. Anson would have accompanied us had it not been for Lurie’s condition , he said. Yet he was sending an offer to my father: a house— one of Lurie’s rental properties—rent-free until he got on his financial feet in Bluewater; funds advanced, if needed, to move to Texas—a remigration; and assurance of all the business a veterinarian could handle. Ernest would deliver this mandated offer with little confidence . He knew well why my father had not returned to live in Texas, knew of my mother’s promise to a sister who had died from scarlet fever before I was born, a promise to not leave her. She rested in the Rock Springs graveyard, and my mother would never be far away. As for bringing me back if at all possible, this too was wishful thinking. And Ernest had yet another cause for haste—Ellafronia Cauldwell. Ellafronia had at last broken with her on-again offagain cowboy. Ernest had not been far to seek. The long road home, the strip of earth balling up before my eyes, had its hypnotic effect. I slept or dozed. Nothing was new now. Crossing the Mississippi, we halted long enough for a tugboat pulling a string of barges to pass beneath us. I looked down the smokestack and felt a hot blast for an instant. The barges were stacked with bales of cotton, four bales high. Ernest 137 CH IN ABE R R Y waved, and I waved. We were answered by a toot of the steam whistle. We reached Montgomery at noon on the third day, and we saw the dome of the capitol glittering in the sun. Four hours, by Ernest’s calculation, before we would draw up at my house. As we sped up the highway toward Nolasulga, Ecleatic, Wetumpka, and Opelika, the tires began to hum. The song was happening in my head, and the tires on packed earth were accompanying the words: Brave and pure thy men and women, Better this than corn and wine, Make us worthy...