In the Beginning — The Farm
I’m Jimmy. I live on a farm with my parents and my two older brothers. Both my brothers like sports so they sweat and stink a lot. Billy’s thirteen and he’s starting high school in Riverdale next year. Dicky’s ten and in sixth grade at Burrel School and I don’t hafta start first grade for another year, since I’m five years old. It’s 1953.
One of the best things about the farm is all the animals. We have cows and steers and ducks and dogs. My daddy grows cotton and when the boll weevils and other bugs fly in and start to eat the crops, Daddy calls a goose herder who brings his geese and lets them loose in the field and they eat all the bugs. Daddy also knows a Basque shepherd. That means he’s from some place by Spain and doesn’t speak American. He has a bunch of sheep and some Border Collies and a little trailer and he moves around from crop to crop and the sheep eat all the weeds but not the cotton. The dogs keep the sheep from wandering off. Daddy says that those dogs can kill a coyote if it tries to steal a sheep. That don't bother me, cuz I hear those coyotes howling late at night and I don't like them. I pet a couple of the dogs today but not the sheep.
□ □ □ □
Daddy is leading a bunch of boy scouts on a campout at the back of the farm near the hole. That’s where we dump our garbage.
We pitch a whole bunch of tents and I’m sleeping in one with Dicky. Daddy made me come too cuz there’s no one at home to take care of me. Mommy’s staying at the hospital in Fresno, cuz she’s gonna have a baby.
It’s the middle of the night and I’m asleep. Then, all sudden like, Daddy yanks me out of the wet sleeping bag, calling me a pissing son of a bitch. That wakes everybody up. All these flashlights are shining in my face like I’m a coyote that got caught up in barbed wire. Except for Billy everyone’s making fun of me yelling “Peed in your pants, peed in your pants!” He wants to help, but Daddy won’t let him.
“Go on home,” my father says. “Babies can’t stay with grown-ups. Now, get on back to the house.”
“I need a flashlight,” I tell him.
“Did you bring a flashlight?” he asks.
“No.”
“Then you can’t have one. Now get home ‘fore the moon’s down. The good scouts need their sleep.”
This is the first time I’ve been outside in the dark. It’s half a mile back to the house and getting darker and darker. I hear something coming at me. I'm afraid it might be a coyote. But it’s my dog, Tiny. He’s a Great Dane and my father called him Tiny cuz he was the runt of the litter, whatever that means. I love Tiny. I used to ride him when I was little. Then, one day, I got too big and he bit me, but that’s okay. He still loves me.
I’m scared to be in the house alone so I get a blanket and go sleep on the back porch with Tiny.
□ □ □ □
Mommy’s home from the hospital. I’m not gonna tell her about peeing in the sleeping bag cuz she’s busy with the new baby, a girl named Kathy, and Mommy’s all smiles. Kathy has a soft spot in her head that I’m not supposed to touch. She’s all red and wrinkled but smells good, not like my brothers. Right now she sleeps in my parents room. Dicky and I sleep in our bedroom, and Billy has his own room. Kathy’s gonna move in with Billy when she stops crying all the time. I hope that’s soon.
□ □ □ □
We’re driving in to Fresno today to see Gramma Laura. She don’t like me and I don’t like her back. She’s kinda scary. She says I ask too many questions and that “Children should be seen and not heard.” Sometimes Mama let’s me go over to Auntie Helen’s since she just lives at the other end of the block. I like Auntie Helen a lot better. I can’t believe they’re sisters. She talks to me and asks me about the farm and what I do and stuff I know about. She asks me how to milk a cow and I tell her and she gives a little giggle when I show her how to wrap her fingers around the teats and squeeze, then she puts her hand on my head and tells me I’m smart for a six year old. She tells me about Great Gramma Mary Schultz and how she came from Germany and bought land from the railroad and built the very farm where I live now. I can tell by her smile that she likes me. Before I go back to Gramma’s, she kisses my forehead and gives me a butterscotch candy.
My other Great Grandma Chartrand used to live across Normal Street, kinda in the middle of the block between Auntie Helen and Gramma. She’s their mother. She’s nice but she’s thin and can barely talk. She’s always in bed, like maybe she’s sick or something. One day I ask why people are moving into her house and Gramma says, “She died, dear. Now go outside and play.”
I run to Auntie Helen’s crying cuz I think people must’ve taken her mom away, but she explains what it means when people die. She asks if I remember when Grandpa died, but I don’t. All I know is that he was A.W. Schultz and my dad is A.W. junior and Billy is A.W. the third.
□ □ □ □
Daddy comes in and feels my bed sheets before I’m even out of bed. They’re wet. I try to run, but he grabs me. As soon as he unbuckles his belt I start crying. I hate when he hits me. Dicky leaves the room whenever Daddy takes after me. I don’t much blame him. Daddy’s hit him plenty of times, too.
I don’t know why I pee in the bed. I try to sleep all curled in a ball so only my pajamas get wet, but I guess I move around when I sleep cuz everything always ends up wet.
When I’m done crying I go outside to see Tiny. He always has a big wet smile and wags his whole butt when he sees me. I wish I was still little so I could climb on his back. Sometimes I imagine I hop on and we run away to someplace where nobody gets hit. Maybe someplace way up in the hills where the outlaw Joaquin Marietta used to have his secret hideout.
Usually I just walk around the farm with Tiny. He likes to go to the big hole. He can usually find a jack rabbit going through the trash, then chase it down and kill it in less than a minute. He carries it home in his mouth and leaves it by the back porch and then eats it later. Mama hates when he does that. Daddy likes it cuz he doesn’t have to feed him.
□ □ □ □
We drove into Fresno last week and Mama got me some shorts, a pair of long pants for church, two shirts, and socks and stuff while we were at Monkey Ward. That’s what Daddy calls it. I’m s’posed to start first grade soon, but I don’t wanna. I’d rather stay with Mama. But she says it’ll be better for everybody, cuz she’s gonna start selling Avon soon and can’t be lugging two kids around in this heat. I tell her that I can hold Kathy while she talks to the ladies, but she thinks I’m too small. So I guess I’m going to school.
□ □ □ □
Okay, so maybe school isn’t so bad. I don’t know about the bus though. It takes about fifteen minutes to walk to school, but it takes a lot longer on the bus. That’s cuz it’s heading the wrong direction when it picks me up. Mrs. Ryherd seems nice, I guess. She never taught first grade in Burrel before, so my parents don’t know her very good.
The best part of school is lunchtime in the cafeteria. The food is really good, and on days when they serve canned peas or canned spinach, Madge reaches under the counter and quietly slips a bowl of corn or string beans onto my tray cuz she knows I like them. I love Madge. She says it’s nice to have another Schultz boy to cook for.
□ □ □ □
It’s a really hot day, so after church I’m playing with my brothers in the swimming hole next to the house. Daddy calls me from the kitchen to come inside, but when I get close to the back porch, a big ugly duck is blocking my way. I stop and try to shoo it off but it lowers its head and hisses at me.
Daddy yells “Get in here, now. Kick that duck out of your way, for cryin’ out loud.”
I try that but then it comes at me. I’m wearing my swim trunks and I know how much a bite on the leg hurts. I run around to the front door to get in the house, which I think is pretty smart of me. But Daddy grabs my arm and pulls me to the hall closet where he pulls out a quirt. I know what a quirt is, cuz I’ve seen them in the tack shop. He starts strapping me across the back of my legs, telling me that when he says to do something, I damn well better do it.
The next day, even though it’s a hundred degrees out, I wear my church pants to school. I don’t want anyone to see the lash marks on my legs. The scabs stick to the pants and it gets all runny in spots so Mrs. Ryherd sends me home.
□ □ □ □
They ran electricity to the pump house last week and today they put in the new pump. Now the water always runs fast. The rod from the windmill still moves up and down when the blades spin around, but it’s not connected to anything.
“We’re gonna get a dryer soon, too,” my mom says. “No more clothes on the line. Won’t that be lovely?”
Oh, and Daddy let this guy put up his chicken coops out front of the house, close to Jameson Avenue. Each day when I get home from school I have to gather eighteen eggs and not let any chickens out. Daddy said it’s damn hard to catch a chicken. Tiny could catch one, but then he’d kill it. I’ve helped my brothers carry siphons and stuff when we irrigate, but this is my first job that’s just mine. I am the egg boy.
□ □ □ □
At least once a week I’m the last to leave the dinner table. I have to sit here forever till I finish my peas or it’s time to go to bed. It’s not too bad. I can still hear the TV. But on nights when I Love Lucy and Amos ‘n Andy are on, I line up the peas on a piece of wood that’s under the table and I’m done. I like those programs the best. I think because they all live in New York. I think maybe I might go to New York one day and meet them, or see Ed Sullivan or Arlene Francis on What’s My Line? I bet it must be wonderful there.
I have to go get eggs now. I hate going over there in the dark. I can hear the coyotes howl. Dicky told me that coyotes eat little kids all the time. I have bad dreams about getting chased in the dark, but it’s usually a wolf or the devil. The nuns warned us about the devil in catechism. We go to Saint Teresa in Riverdale. Well, not Daddy.
I get the eggs, but I run back to the house so fast that some of them crack a little bit. Mama says not to worry; she’ll just make scrambled eggs in the morning and won’t tell Daddy.
□ □ □ □
My favorite room in the house is my parents’ bedroom. That’s where the swamp cooler is. I love bouncing on the bed to cool off, and when I close my eyes, I’m flying high up in the sky, arms way out to my sides, riding the wind through the white clouds, feeling weightless, looking down on our farm far below.
This afternoon I tape a towel onto my shirt like a cape. I’m bouncing on the bed with eyes closed, I hear my cape flapping behind me and, like magic, I’m flying. I fly all the way to Riverdale and back, just like Superman.
Suddenly my brother Dicky yells “What are you doing? You’re gonna be in so much trouble when I tell Daddy!”
For a second, I think I’m falling, and then I open my eyes. I stop and say, “Please don’t tell Daddy! If he found out, I’ll get a whipping for sure. Please, please, I’ll do anything you want.”
“Okay, if you do exactly what you’re told, I won’t say anything.” I agree. “Lie down on the floor.” I lie on my back between the bed and the cooler wall. Dicky reaches down and pushes a spot directly behind my right ear.
“I’m going to press this spot for fifteen seconds. Once I let go, if you move, you’ll pass out, and when you come to, you’ll be completely paralyzed. So don’t move! I’ll be back later to release the hold.” I do what he tells me. I’ve seen the “sleeper hold” used on Bigtime Wrestling, so I know it’s real. I wait and wait for Dicky to come back. I wait for hours.
After a forever period of time, I hear my older brother Billy coming home from high school. “Jimmy, where are you?” I’m too afraid to answer. “Jimmy, where are you?” I continue to lie there not knowing what to do. Still scared I gently tap the wall with my right foot. I don’t pass out. I figure that the sleeper hold only affects the upper half of the body, so I tap again, loud enough for my brother to hear.
I hear Billy’s voice, “Jimmy!” Tap, tap, tap. “Where are you?” His voice gets closer. “What the heck are you doing?” As I lie there in silence. “Answer me!”
In little more than a whisper, I say “Dick put the sleeper hold on me!”
Billy laughs and says, “Get up!” He grabs my hand and pulls me to my feet. I’m surprised I don’t pass out. I take a few steps. Once I feel steady, I run into the bathroom to pee. As I come out, Dick passes me in the hallway and snickers.
After that day I still bounce on the bed, but it’s not the same. I am no longer able to fly.
□ □ □ □
Today is the best day ever cuz Daddy says I can go out with my brothers and flag for the crop duster. Mama doesn’t want me to go, saying I’m too young, but I go anyway. The crop duster’s an old plane, the kind with two wings, and it’s carrying a big tank of DDT. Dicky and I wait at one end of a long row of cotton. We’re both here but Dicky’s the only one with a flag. I just get to stand next to him and not duck when the plane comes by. Billy’s clear at the other end of the field by the same row. They both start waving their flags at the same time. The plane swoops down right over our heads and sprays a wide stripe of the sticky liquid on the cotton, then pulls up just before he gets to Billy. Billy doesn’t duck. While the plane loops around we move over twelve rows or so and then the plane comes back the other way. It comes straight at us and at the last second, I duck. But not Dicky. He just turns his head and closes his eyes. And the plane does it over and over again until the whole field gets soaked with chemicals. Then we have to go home and shower and put on fresh clothes cuz ours are dripping wet. Mama washes them right away cuz she says they smell foul. Daddy says that now that we can get DDT so cheap, we won’t need the goose herder anymore.
□ □ □ □
Dicky calls me out behind the house. Daddy dug a new cesspool, and next to it is a really big pile of dirt way higher than my head. Dicky just dug a tunnel through the middle of it. He tells me he needs me to go in and dig out the middle part and make it larger. I thought having our very own tunnel would be fun, so I crawl in and begin digging.
Just as I get to the middle, both ends cave in, first the one in front of me and then the one behind. It’s completely dark and I have a mouthful of dirt. The more I try to move, the more the dirt crumbles in around me and the smaller the space gets. I start crying as I realize that Dicky has left and I have fallen into his trap again.
Soon, my tears stop and as I calm down I begin to feel okay. I’m able to breathe and I’m surprisingly comfortable, so I take a nap.
The next thing I know, beams of white light are jabbing at my eyes and I hear Billy’s voice, “Jimmy, are you in there?” I stick my hand up and my brother latches on to my wrist and yanks me out.
□ □ □ □
Today Daddy’s making me try out for Little League. Since I don’t know how to play baseball, I’m given a glove and told to take the outfield, behind third base. I’m just standing there. I have no real interest in what the other boys are doing, so I watch a bee at my feet buzz from one little flower to the next. When I hear the crack of the bat, I look up and see the ball rising high in the air coming right at me. I duck to avoid getting hit. My father, watching the tryouts with every other farmer from miles around, gets so angry that he marches onto the field, grabs me by the ear, and drags me to his truck. He yells at me the whole time he’s driving back to the farm.
“You stand out there like a goddamn sissy! What are you afraid of? It’s just a ball!”
He walks me to the pump house, tells me to face the door, then tells me that he’s going to toss hardballs at my back. I begin to cry. I turn around when I feel the first one hit me. “Stand there and take it. Don’t worry. Eventually, it’ll stop hurting.”
It never does.
□ □ □ □
I knew that Daddy had done something bad, because he and Mommy would stop talking whenever one of us kids came in the room. Today I found out what it was. Daddy was driving on Elkhorn and he got stopped by the constable. He usually just drives home with the constable close behind, but this time he got taken to jail. Today Daddy had to go to court and they told him that he has to go to the Honor Farm for six months. It’s very quiet around the dinner table. Daddy tells Dicky and Billy what he expects of them for the next few months. He doesn’t talk to me or Kathy so I figure he doesn’t expect so much from us.
□ □ □ □
It’s kinda quiet around here without Daddy. Nobody gets yelled at. Nobody gets hit. On Sundays after church, we go to the Honor Farm to see him. Mama drives slowly as she approaches the main driveway. All around crops are growing: cotton or alfalfa or orchards, but not here. It’s kinda bleak, just a high metal fence on each side as we raise dust on the long driveway. We stop at a little building with a gate and mama gives the guy in the uniform Daddy’s name. We drive up to a large gray concrete building and park. Billy and Dick are looking out the windows, for prisoners, they say. I sit close to Mama. Kathy is clinging to her like a sock sticks to a blanket coming out of the dryer. Finally’ a big metal door opens and Daddy comes in the room. He looks so quiet and sad in his dark blue pants and pale blue shirt. He’s dressed just like all the other guys here. I usually only see him in his overalls. Well, Easter he wears his suede coat.
He shows us around. He points to a row of vegetables that he says are his, but they all look alike to me. I don’t care about his vegetables, and I don’t like it here. Mama’s sad and it’s all his fault. Kathy has her arms around Mama and doesn’t look at Daddy.
“Hey, Punkin, it’s okay. Daddy’ll be home soon, I promise.” She hugs him for a moment and turns back to Mama. I guess Kathy doesn’t like it here either. Don’t they have any colored paint? Why is everything gray?
“Can we go now?” I ask.
“Wait in the car. I need to talk to your father.” She gives me Kathy’s arm. Mama soon follows with the boys and we drive home in complete silence.
□ □ □ □
My father’s busy building us a new house. Plus he hasn’t been drinking since he got back home, so he’s pretty nice to me. I still wet the bed sometimes, but now that we have a washer and a real dryer, I have to do my own sheets. If it’s hot out, I have to hang them on the line. That’s okay, except I have to stand on a box and if I fall off I have to wash the sheets all over again. Mama’s so busy with Avon that she’s hardly ever home to do any kind of cleaning. Laundry, dusting, mopping. We do it all. She’s still pretty, but some days she looks real tired. Once we move into the new house, she won’t have to sell Avon door to door anymore.
□ □ □ □
So, third grade is okay, mostly. I’m out playing on the monkey bars with Susie Clark when she hangs from her knees and her panties show and I try to look away, cuz, yuck, it’s a girl’s panties. But she yells at me, anyway.
“I saw you looking at my panties!” she says and then hits me in the face with her fist. My nose starts bleeding, so I go to the office and Mrs. Prewitt gets the bleeding to stop, but then she writes me up for looking under Susie’s skirt, cuz Susie told her that, but that’s not how it happened. I hate Susie Clark. My whole family laughs when I tell them that I got beat up by a girl. Well, everybody but my mom. She pats my head while I hug her around the waist.
“You’re gonna turn him into a sissy boy with all that coddling,” my father says. Mama puts her hands over my ears so I can’t hear him. I don’t know why. Does she think that works? I can still hear him. But it’s okay, I don’t know what coddling means anyway.
□ □ □ □
I try to figure out when Dicky’s going to do something horrible to me, but I never know. This afternoon after school, he says he wants to play mummy and talks me into letting him tape me up. First, he has me put my hands into the pockets of my cut-offs. Then, he tapes my wrists to the shorts with adhesive tape, looping it around and around my waist till I can’t move my arms.
Then, he leads me to the side yard, just outside our bedroom window and tapes my head to the bottom branch of the sycamore tree. I’m facing south into the sun when he tapes my eyelashes to my eyebrows so I can’t close my eyes.
As the burning sets in, I feel my eyes water. I eventually force my eyelids closed, leaving most of my lashes on the tape. Mama sees me when she comes home early from selling Avon and has to pull all the tape off my tender skin and scalp. For this, Dicky gets a whipping.
I’m glad.
□ □ □ □
Most everything in Burrel is in one square block. Jimmy Woods’ dad runs the Flying Red Horse gas station and lives in the house behind it. To get gas Jimmy or his dad cranks a big lever back and forth, pumping the gas into a large clear glass tank on top. There are markers on the tank starting with zero at the top. Once the tank is filled they put the nozzle in my dad’s tank and it drains from the big glass tank through the hose and out the nozzle. When it’s full, they read the marking on the glass. My dad grumbles when he sees the price has gone from twenty-eight and six tenths to twenty-eight and eight tenths cents a gallon.
Ray Ellena’s grocery store is on the other corner. Anita works next door at the post office. And around the block, Jewel runs the switchboard, which is inside Anita’s house. We live over a mile away and all you have to do is pick up the phone in the kitchen and crank the box on the wall and Jewel will answer. She can connect us to anywhere in the world, but not too late or she’ll be sleeping. There are five families on our line, so we only answer when we hear one long ring and two short. Our phone number is 25-Y-11.
□ □ □ □
Now that I’m going into third grade and Dicky’s going to Riverdale High, I have to milk Bag twice a day. I think that kinda makes her my cow, so I ask Daddy if I can rename her, since Bag is such a stupid name for a cow.
“Dicky picked the name and it stays. End of discussion.”
I hate milking her because she hates me and sticks her foot in the bucket every time she gets a chance. Then I have to throw the milk out and start over. Daddy can tell how many times she stepped in the bucket by how much milk I bring home. He mostly glares at me if I mess up. We always have more milk than we need, so what’s the big deal. If we have too much, the dogs get it.
□ □ □ □
Something’s been happening since Dick went into high school. That’s what we have to call him now. Anyway, he has started being nice to me. I don’t know why, I guess maybe he doesn’t think I’m a twerp anymore or something. He was really nice to me when he taught me how to milk the cow. And now, he tells me I can ride with him on Buck. That scares me a little, cuz Buck is such a big horse, but Dick says it’ll be okay.
I had a really good time on Buck. We just rode around here, but Dick says maybe next time we can ride over to Kalar’s place. I want to go now, but it’s time for me to milk the cow. I guess maybe Bag isn’t such a bad name for a cow after all.
□ □ □ □
Daddy says we have to go to bed early cuz the water’s coming in about three. That means that Pine Flat Lake is full cuz of the snow melt, so they’re letting extra water flow into the King’s River. It comes down through a bunch of canals all the way to our farm. And when it gets here we gotta be ready to start watering crops, else water just floods everything. All the ditches are ready and all the siphons are laid out. A siphon is kind of a u-shaped tube, and one end goes in the ditch and the other goes to a row of cotton. When the water fills up the ditch we have to get enough siphons going to keep the water level steady. Daddy says the moon should be bright enough that we can see without the pick-up lights. Once we get it steady and make sure there aren’t any gopher holes running, we can go home for a few hours.
□ □ □ □
Daddy spends all his time working on the house. I like him better now. He doesn’t hit me anymore, and I get to help him, “as best a ten-year-old can,” he says. He does a lot of stuff himself, but sometimes people come in to do special work. Harold Rodrigues, the guy who lives near Bender and does all our dousing for us, he and some of his carpenter friends are building all the kitchen cabinets, and a friend of Ray Ellena is putting in the fireplace. It seems like everyone from miles around has come in and done something. Daddy even lets me help sometimes. I mostly clean up at the end of the day collecting all the scrap wood. If pieces can be used again, they go in his pile; if they can’t, they go in mine. I whittle them into shapes I can use with my Lincoln Logs. Pretty soon, I’ll be able to build a whole western town.
The Prewitts are close friends with my parents, now. Warren is the principal and the seventh and eighth grade teacher at Burrel School. He’ll be my teacher next year. Virginia is the secretary and, sometimes, the nurse. They’ve been playing bridge at our dining room table, but in the new house, my dad is building a special game room where they’ll play with the door closed and no children allowed, except when we’ll have to bring them stuff.
Today Virginia and Mama filling the electric roaster with linoleum squares to make them hot and soft. Next, Daddy and Warren spread sticky tar onto the plywood floor. Then Daddy pressed the hot squares onto the tar and when it cools it’ll be solid as a rock. They do this all day until the whole room is covered with linoleum. Every Saturday they plan to get together, do another floor, and then play bridge.
I love the Prewitts. Warren is the one grown-up who seems to like me the way I am, and doesn’t tell me Don’t run like that, or, Try not to throw like a girl. And Virginia is the funniest woman I’ve ever met. My mom and dad are happier when the Prewitts are around. We all are.
□ □ □ □
Today I have to say good-bye to Mr. Butter. When he was a newborn he’d drink all of bags milk and then butt her in the side to try and get more. Then we separated them and I’d have to feed him from a bucket with a big ol nipple on the side. I didn’t think he’d go for it, but as soon as I squirt him in the face he didn’t care whose nipple it was, as long as it had milk. Now Mr. Butter is all grown up and the butcher from Riverdale’s coming to slaughter him for meet. It’s hard to watch. One minute he’s standing on all fours looking at me, then the gun shot and his eyes go wide and he crumbles to the ground. They do a lot more, but I can’t watch cuz I feel sick to my stomach and I go in the house.
Later when I come out, there’s a little blood on the ground next to some tire marks and that’s it. Dick told me a long time ago not to give Mr. Butter a name. Now I know why.
□ □ □ □
In two weeks, the butcher shows up with about a thousand pounds of beef, all wrapped in shiny white paper, each piece marked, and we load up the long freezer with the giant lid: steaks on the right, then roasts and ribs and last is hamburger. Later we’ll trade some of it for pork shoulder, bacon, and ham from Sample’s Hog Farm next door.
Sammy Paz’s family is back from Mexico. I’ve always liked Sammy and it’s nice to have a kid my age on the same farm. Sammy’s mom trades a gallon of our cream for a pound of her fresh butter. Then she trades the other butter she makes from that gallon for flour and beans. Every day when we get home from seventh grade, Mrs. Paz has frijoles boiling on the stove, fresh flour tortillas fresh off the griddle and globs of that butter. There ain’t a thing better than a fresh bean burrito with a ton of butter. I want to live with the Paz Family forever.
□ □ □ □
Today is moving day. Some things we don’t have to move, like the washer and dryer, the stove and refrigerator. The new place has an oven built in the wall and the range is in the middle of a big island with seating all around. Since we won’t need a dining room table, Daddy decides to cut it down and make a giant coffee table out of it. When Dick and Billy try to move it, all these little black pellets fall onto the floor. Billy picks one up and says, “What are these? Oh my God, they’re old dried up peas. Where did they come from?” And then he looks right at me. “You’re lucky Daddy didn’t see this,” he says, and gives me a wink.
□ □ □ □
The new house is huge. There is a living room and a family room, and the kitchen has an electric dishwasher. Down the hall is my parents’ bedroom, Kathy’s bedroom, the game room and a bathroom with two sinks and a tub. At the end of the back hall is the boys’ room, big enough for three extra long twin beds and a pool table. But the best part is that we have our own bathroom with two sinks and a shower. The other best part is that we have a swimming pool. And, since daddy put up the forty foot antenna, we can get all three Fresno stations really clear, and some fuzzy ones from Bakersfield. Today Mama caught me watching Buck Owens on the fuzzy channel and told me that the fuzz would ruin my eyes and that country western music would rot my brain.
□ □ □ □
Dick and Billy got a mail order set of weights that has a long barbell, two dumbbells, and a bench. It came with an instruction booklet with models showing all the positions—the models are Betty Grable and Buster Crabbe, my favorite Tarzan. I wanted to use the weights, but Billy said I’m only eleven and couldn’t. I told him I’m eleven and three quarters.
I have been playing with my ding dong for a few weeks now. It gets hard every morning and every afternoon. It just sort of happens, all of a sudden like. I try to push it down so that everyone can’t see it, but when I touch it, it feels really good and gets harder. I found out that it’s more fun to play with it when I’m looking at the models and imagining Betty and Tarzan kissing each other. When I look at her and play with it, it feels good. But when I play with it and look at him I like it even better.
I like to run home from school when no one is here, sneak into the bathroom, and look at the pictures of Tarzan. Today I was doing it again and it felt really good when something happened. That good feeling began to spread all over my body, I started to shake, and my whole insides exploded. Whatever it is made all this cream shoot out of where I pee. Tons of it kept coming out and it felt really good but I got scared. I thought that something inside of me must have broke and that I was going to be in pain any second and have to go to the doctor and then I’d have to tell him what I was doing and he’d tell my mom and then she’d make me wear work gloves for the rest of my life so that I couldn’t touch it anymore.
□ □ □ □
After a few days, I figure out that nothing bad has happened and that maybe my insides aren’t broke. So I do it again, and the same thing happens but this time I’m not scared. The toilet in the boys’ bathroom is tucked back beyond the shower with a built-in bookcase in between. On the side of the bookcase is a big towel ring mounted about eye level. I figure out that if I put a washcloth on the lower shelf, and curl the instruction booklet into the towel ring, I can lean into the bookcase so my eyes are really close to the picture of Tarzan, then play with myself until the white stuff shoots out and into the washcloth. And I still have one hand free to touch other parts.
Today I’m in there, again, when my mom walks in with a stack of fresh towels. She shrieks, drops the towels, and runs out of the room. She only sees one naked leg and an arm, but I think she knows what I’m doing. I’m afraid to face her so I go out the back door to the pool. I swim for a long time, and when I come back inside she doesn’t say anything. Now, every time she brings in towels, she always knocks first.
□ □ □ □
I overhear some kids at school talking about some guy who put his thing in an overripe cantaloupe that was left in the field after harvest. They’re soft and gushy and about a hundred twenty degrees. I try it and it works, but there is way too big of a mess. There are seeds everywhere and I’m really sticky. I don’t ever want to do that again.
This gets me thinking about other places I might be able to put it. When Jeffy from school asks me if he can come to my house to swim, I say yes.
Now that I have him here in the bedroom I tell him, “If you lie face down on the bed naked and let me lay on top of you and rub my ding dong between your butt cheeks with a little Jergen’s lotion, you can come swimming here any time you want.”
We try it and I really like doing that with him. I think he likes it too, because he comes over two or three times a week. We now trade places being on the bottom.
□ □ □ □
I have to milk Bag twice a day, at six in the morning and at four in the afternoon. Once we move the clocks back, it’s sometimes dark before I finish. I’m milking away, thinking about where I can put my thing when, all sudden like, Bag hunches into peeing position and lets it go. I get the milk out of the way in time, and when I see steam come up from her pee, I think that it’s probably a really warm place in there. I set the bucket aside and put the stool behind Bag. I stand on the stool and, as I’m trying to get my zipper down, she moves a step and I fall off the stool.
I try it again, this time dropping my Wranglers first, but when I try to step up the Wrangler leg turns inside out, my foot gets caught, and I fall over again. Bag turns her big neck around and just stares at me—ears back and then forward again.
The third time, I only drop my jeans to just below the waist, then climb on the stool. I move the tail to one side and stick in my weenie. I’m amazed by the heat, and want to stay in so badly that, when she steps forward and the stool falls away, I try to hang onto the big hip bones that stick up above her back, holding on so that the top half of my body is actually on top of hers. I am riding her and I’m inside, but I’m not having a good time.
I drop to the ground, pull up my jeans, grab the bucket, and try to find my way in the dark back to the house without stepping in a cow pie. I’m not sure if I’ll ever try that again.
□ □ □ □
When we get a second cow, Dick starts helping with the milking again. Daddy says it would take me all night to milk two cows. Dick talks Daddy into buying the parts to build a milking machine and Dick installs it in the shed. Once Dick teaches me how to use the machine, I’m back on my own, doing all the milking. It goes fast, only maybe ten minutes for each cow. But then I have to sterilize everything which takes over half an hour, so I’d rather just do it by hand. But Daddy says no, cuz maybe someday Kathy might have to do the milking, so I need to keep the machine going.
Tonight, after I bring the milk inside, I come back out to clean the machine. I think that maybe it might feel good to put it into one of the teatcups. It feels good at first but the suction starts drawing all my blood to the end of my weenie and it begins to throb. At first I pull at it and it won’t come off but then I remember to pinch the tube and it slides right off, but it really hurts. In a couple of days, I feel a lot better, but I think I’m done putting it in places it doesn’t belong.
□ □ □ □
About three in the morning, I hear a horrible noise outside like an animal is dying or something. It’s so loud we all go out and find Bag barely able to stand with a big swollen belly. One of the fence boards fell down and she got into the alfalfa field. Daddy says that cows can only eat alfalfa after it’s dry, cuz new fresh alfalfa makes gas in her inner belly and it can’t get out. I’m crying because Bag in such pain. Her legs give out and she’s on the ground on her side, moaning like I never knew a cow could.
Daddy sends Dick to fetch some turpentine. Then he pulls out his Bowie knife and I start screaming cuz I think he’s going to kill her. But he tells me to hush up and watch. Then he cuts a big eight inch gash in Bags side. The second he does there’s a big whoosh of air that comes out of her, kinda like popping a thick hairy balloon. Then Daddy sticks his whole arm inside my sweet Bag and starts pulling out huge clumps of chewed up alfalfa. He must have pulled out two or three bucketfuls. Then Bag gets real quiet, so I get down on the ground and hold her face in my lap. Her eyes are bigger round than I’ve ever seen, but she isn’t bellowing and her breathing is good.
When her belly is cleaned out Daddy pours the turpentine all over the hole to help it heal, he says. Then he slaps her on the rump and she gets up. Dick patches the fence and Daddy tells me to report to him every day on how she’s doing. I give Bag a big hug around the neck and we all go back to bed.
Every day, I measure the wound, and every day, it heals up a little bit more.
Today I check it and the hole is gone. I tell Daddy and he says she’s finally healed. I ask him Why doesn’t the milk taste like turpentine and he just laughs and rubs my head. I love him for saving my cow’s life.
□ □ □ □
I don’t know what wakes me up in the middle of the night, the movement in the hallway or the faint smell of limburger cheese. It’s happened before and can only mean one thing—Daddy’s in the Frigidaire having a midnight snack. I put my robe on join him. I walk into the kitchen sleepily and he puts his arm around me.
“What’s wrong son? Couldn’t sleep either? Join me for a sandwich.” He pulls out the salami, the limburger, the mayo and mustard, and a dill pickle. He grabs an onion from the basket next to the fridge and slices up the onion, the pickle, and the sourdough, on the breadboard that’s built into the cooking island. His sandwich has everything; mine has everything but the limburger. I pour some fresh milk from the gallon jug into two big glasses. “Grab the fried potatoes from breakfast while you’re in there.” He adds.
This is one of those times when I know Daddy won’t raise his voice to me. We sit together and eat and talk about everything under the sun. He tells me that both he and grandpa were taught in the same three classroom building that I learn in today. I talk about my teacher, Mr. Reams, and the day his teeth came flying out in front of the whole class. Daddy laughs hard at that one. He talks about the day Grandpa moved into Fresno and we finally had the ranch to ourselves. He’s real proud. Daddy talks softly the whole time, not like he is normally. He laughs and rustles my hair. He looks at me like he loves me.
No comments:
Post a Comment