"Don't get smart with me, boy!" Stick said, trying to reassert himself. "Don't suppose you got any witnesses, do you?"
The humor vanished into a long period of silence. I was hoping that maybe Bo or Dale would step forward and claim to be a witness. Since the Spruills had just proved that they would lie under pressure, it seemed sensible to me that one of them would quickly verify Hank's version. But nobody moved, nobody spoke. I slipped over a few inches and was directly behind my mother.
Then I heard words that would change my life. With the air perfectly still, Hank said, "Little Chandler saw it."
Little Chandler almost wet his pants.
When I opened my eyes, everyone was staring at me, of course. Gran and my mother looked particularly horrified. I felt guilty and looked guilty, and I knew in an instant that every person there believed Hank. I was a witness! I'd seen the fight.
"Come here, Luke," Pappy said, and I walked as slowly as humanly possible to a spot in the center. I glanced up at Hank, and his eyes were glowing. He wore his usual smirk, and his face told me that he knew I was caught. The crowd inched in as if surrounding me.
"Did you see the fight?" Pappy asked.
I'd been taught in Sunday school from the day I could walk that lying would send you straight to hell. No detours. No second chances. Straight into the fiery pit, where Satan was waiting with the likes of Hitler and Judas Iscariot and General Grant. Thou shalt not bear false witness, which, of course, didn't sound exactly like a strict prohibition against lying, but that was the way the Baptists interpreted it. And I'd been whipped a couple of times for telling little fibs. "Just tell the truth and get it over with" was one of Gran's favorite sayings.
I said, "Yes sir."
"What were you doin' there?"
"I heard there was a fight, so I took off and watched it." I wasn't about to include Dewayne, at least not until I had to.
Stick dropped to one knee so that his chubby face was eye-level with mine. "Tell me what you saw," he said. "And tell the truth."
I glanced at my father, who was hovering over my shoulder. And I looked at Pappy, who, oddly, didn't seem at all angry with me.
I sucked in air until my lungs were full, and I looked at Tally, who was watching me very closely. Then I looked at Stick's flat nose and his black, puffy eyes, and I said, "Jerry Sisco was fightin' some man from the hills. Then Billy Sisco jumped on him, too. They were beatin' him up pretty bad when Mr. Hank stepped in to help the man from the hills."
"Right then, was it two against one, or two against two?" Stick asked.
"Two against one."
"What happened to the first hill boy?"
"I don't know. He just left. I think he was hurt pretty bad."
"All right. Keep goin'. And tell the truth."
"He's tellin' the truth!" Pappy snarled.
"Go on."
I glanced around again to make sure Tally was still watching. Not only was she studying me closely, but now she had a pleasant little smile. "Then, all of a sudden, Bobby Sisco charged from the crowd and attacked Mr. Hank. It was three against one, just like Mr. Hank said."
Hank's face did not relax. If anything, he looked at me with even more viciousness. He was thinking ahead, and he wasn't finished with me.
"A Painted House"
"I guess that settles it," Pappy said. "I ain't no lawyer, but I could sway a jury if it's three against one."
Stick ignored him and leaned even closer to me. "Who had the two-by-four?" he asked, his eyes narrowing as if this were the most important question of all.
Hank suddenly exploded. "Tell him the truth, boy!" he shouted. "One of them Siscos picked up that stick of wood, didn't he?"
I could feel the stares of Gran and my mother behind me. And I knew Pappy wanted to reach over and shake me by the neck and somehow make the right words come out.
In front of me, not too far away, Tally was pleading with her eyes. Bo and Dale, and even Trot, were looking at me.
"Didn't he, boy!" Hank barked again.
I met Stick's gaze and began nodding, slowly at first, a timid little lie delivered without a word. And I kept nodding, and kept lying, and in doing so, did more to harvest our cotton than six months of good weather.
I was skirting around the edges of the fiery depths. Satan was waiting, and I could feel the heat. I'd run to the woods and pray for forgiveness as soon as I could. I'd ask God to go easy on me. He'd given us the cotton; it was up to us to protect it and gather the crops.
Stick slowly stood, but he kept staring at me, our eyes locked together, because both of us knew I was lying. Stick didn't want to arrest Hank Spruill, not then anyway. First, he'd have to put the handcuffs on him, a task that could turn ugly. Second, he'd upset all the farmers.
My father grabbed me by the shoulder and shoved me back toward the women. "You've scared him to death, Stick," he said with an awkward laugh, trying to break the tension and get me out of there before I said something wrong.
"Is he a good boy?" Stick asked.
"He tells the truth," my father said.
"Of course he tells the truth," Pappy said with a good dose of anger.
The truth had just been rewritten.
"I'm gonna keep askin' around," Stick said and began walking toward his car. "I might be back later."
He slammed the door of his old patrol car and left our yard. We watched him drive away until he was out of sight.
Chapter 10
Since we didn't work on Sunday, the house became smaller as my parents and grandparents busied themselves with the few light chores that were permitted. Naps were attempted, then abandoned because of the heat. Occasionally, when the moods were edgy, my parents tossed me in the back of the pickup, and we went for a long drive. There was nothing to see-all the land was flat and covered with cotton. The views were the same as those from our front porch. But it was important to get away.
Not long after Stick left, I was marched into the garden and ordered to haul food. A road trip was in the making. Two cardboard boxes were filled with vegetables. They were so heavy that my father had to place them in the back of the truck. As we drove off, the Spruills were scattered across the front yard in various stages of rest. I didn't want to look at them.
I sat in the back between the boxes of vegetables and watched the dust boil from behind the truck, forming gray clouds that rose quickly and hung over the road in the heavy air before slowly dissipating from the lack of wind. The rain and the mud from the early morning were long forgotten. Everything was hot again: the wooden planks of the truck bed, its rusted and unpainted frame, even the corn and potatoes and tomatoes my mother had just washed. It snowed twice a year in our part of Arkansas, and I longed for a thick, cold blanket of white across our winter fields, cottonless and barren.
The dust finally stopped at the edge of the river, and we crept across the bridge. I stood to see the water below, the thick brown stream barely moving along the banks. There were two cane poles in the back of the truck, and my father had promised we'd fish for a while after the food was delivered.
The Latchers were sharecroppers who lived no more than a mile from our house, but they might as well have been in another county. Their run-down shack was in a bend of the river, with elms and willows touching the roof and cotton growing almost to the front porch. There was no grass around the house, just a ring of dirt where a horde of little Latchers played. I was secretly happy that they lived on the other side of the river. Otherwise, I might have been expected to play with them.