Tulsa Burning Read online

  When it was over, I stood looking at the mound of dirt and thinking that Pa was really gone. Used to be that he controlled our lives even when he was gone from home. This time would be different. There wouldn't be no homecoming when he'd cuss or throw the coffeepot full of hot coffee. I expected to get some feeling of lightness knowing it was over with him, but there wasn't no relief in the knowledge, only a strange aching emptiness. I looked at the grave and wished I could buy him some kind of headstone.

  Ma and me were the first to move. We left the neighbor men with their hats in their hands and the women with sad eyes. Cinda Phillips took after us and pulled at my arm. "Heard you'all are moving to town," she said softly.

  "Reckon that's so," I managed to say, but I couldn't look at Cinda. Lately, I'd started to be uncomfortable around her on account of the impure thoughts. See, me and Cinda have been friends since we was six years old, but just a few months ago I noticed that Cinda didn't look the same. Her chest wasn't flat no more. I reckon that's normal and all.

  It's me that ain't normal or decent. I spend a lot of time fighting them impure thoughts, but it ain't easy. I try just to think about how we got to be friends. She had just moved into the house down the road from our place, and I walked by there on my way to school. She was standing beside her swing under the mulberry tree in the front yard.

  "We could walk to school together," she yelled, and she smiled her big smile that showed both front teeth were missing.

  I felt real bashful, just looked down at my bare feet and didn't say nothing. I'd seen Cinda out in front of her place when we drove by in the wagon, and once she come with her mother to sit on the front porch with Ma. "Her name's Cinda," Ma told me, but I just ducked behind my ma's skirt.

  "What's wrong with you, little boy?" Cinda asked me on that first school morning. "Has the cat got your tongue?"

  "I'm not a little boy," I told her. "I'm big as you. Maybe bigger." I moved over to stand beside Cinda, measuring with my eyes how her red pigtailed head measured against my blond one.

  We didn't say nothing to each other, just started walking the half mile to the school. Just outside the one-room schoolhouse, I stopped, suddenly just too scared to go inside. I stepped back away from the door. "I can't go to school," I said. "I don't know nothing about reading or numbers."

  Cinda reached out to grab my hand. "Come on, silly," she said. "You ain't supposed to know nothing when you first go to school. We're going to have us a teacher and books."

  For eight years we walked to school together. Last year we finished at the little school down the road. Pa didn't see no sense in me going to town for high school, but Cinda's pa drove us into Wekiwa, us hunkered down in the back of his old truck. Up front was one seat just big enough for the driver. The rest of the cab was filled with glass jugs of milk that Mr. Phillips would deliver to customers in town. Sometimes Mr. Phillips picked us up after school. Sometimes we walked the three miles home. If Pa was out on a drunk, Ma might drive the wagon into town to get us.

  It made me mad at myself for having them impure thoughts that made me so uncomfortable with Cinda. When she caught up with me and Ma at the cemetery, I just looked down at my shoes while she talked. "It'll be sort of lonesome for me on the ride to school next year," she said.

  I opened up my mouth to say something to her, but no words come to my mind. I just stood there, too dadgum dumb to talk. Ma saved me. "We'll be living over at Sheriff and Mrs. Leonard's place," she said, and she put her hand on Cinda's shoulder. "You come by there and say hey, to us, you hear?"

  Ma moved off a little, and Cinda turned back to me. "I want you to take this," she said, and she took something out of her dress pocket. She reached over, took my hand, and dropped a cold, hard object into it. I opened my fingers and looked down at her lucky silver dollar.

  "No." I shook my head. "I can't take this. You use it to win races and stuff."

  She laughed. "Haven't you noticed we don't run races at high school? You need luck right now more than I do, living with the sheriff and all."

  "You use it for other stuff too, like the test."

  Just last year me and Cinda went over to the county seat to the courthouse and took the county exam that eighth-graders take if they want to go on to high school. Cinda took out her lucky silver dollar, and she laid it between our desks, real careful to make it exactly between us. "This way it will bring us both luck," she said.

  After a while, my eyes went to feeling tired and started watering. I was rubbing at them when Cinda looked over at me. She looked worried, like my eyes might keep me from passing the test. Then she stuck out her leg and used her foot to scoot the silver dollar as close to my desk as she could get it. I reckon it worked. I made a real high score on that test. Cinda did all right too. The way I figure it is that Cinda is the kind that will do all right, always.

  Now she was wanting to give me her most valuable possession. "I wouldn't feel right," I said, and I held it out to her.

  She put her hands behind her back. "Please. You can give it back to me later, but I want you to have it now."

  "Well, okay," I said. "I suspect I will be needing luck."

  Just then her pa called out for her to come along, and she hurried off. I headed to the wagon. I knew folks were passing by me, but I didn't feel none like talking. I leaned my head down against the wood side of the wagon. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Widow Carter and her brother stop a few feet away. "We're real sorry, boy," she said. I nodded. The widow's brother, Oily, was sometimes too addled to know what went on around him. But sometimes he had real clear spells, like today. Oily left his sister's side to come and touch my shoulder.

  It pleased me to have Oily wanting to comfort me on account of him being an expert on hurting. I raised my head and looked into his eyes, brown and knowing.

  Widow Carter come over to lead her brother away, and I realized Mrs. Mitchell and Isaac was standing on my other side.

  Isaac didn't say nothing, just reached out and punched me on the shoulder. It was our way, what we did when we first seen each other after Isaac come home from college or how we'd say good-bye when he was fixing to go back. Isaac was done with college now, and he worked over in Tulsa. I knowed he was missing a day's work to come to see my pa get buried just so he could punch me on the shoulder.

  "I'll miss our talks," Mrs. Mitchell said.

  "Mr. Phillips is going to bring you good milk, though," I said. Then my misery come busting out. "I don't want to live in that man's house," I said.

  "But you will. Your mother needs you."

  I couldn't say nothing about my ma. I was too ashamed knowing she was planning to be real handy when the sheriff took to looking for a second wife.

  Mrs. Mitchell looked over her shoulder to make sure no one was around before she talked more. Then she said, "Be careful. Sheriff Leonard has bad things inside him, and they sometimes come spewing out. Just remember your name. You may need more than ever to be truly Noble." Then she walked away, her dark head held high.

  Ma was moving toward me by then, and Sheriff Leonard walked close behind her. "Let me help you, Vivian," he said when Ma started to climb up to the wagon seat.

  "I'll help her," I said quick, and I took her arm.

  Sheriff Leonard put his big straw hat back on his head, spit his tobacco to the side, and gave me a long look. "Might as well take that chip off your shoulder, son," he drawled. "We're likely to be seeing lots of one another in days to come. Don't it seem like we ought to get to be friends?"

  "Never had me many friends," I said.

  "Suit yourself, then, son." He looked up at Ma. "I'll follow you, Vivian. The missus is real anxious to get you settled in."

  He moved on to the big black car marked "Sheriff."

  I got Ma settled, climbed onto the driver's seat, and told the horses, "Get up." I waited for Ma to scold me on account of me acting like I did toward the sheriff, but she stayed totally silent, staring straight ahead. The cemetery is just at the edge of We
kiwa, so we had to drive three miles to home. When we turned up the driveway to our place, we seen the sheriff's car parked in front of the house.

  Sheriff Leonard was in the front porch rocker. He got up and stretched as me and Ma walked toward him. "Take the horses to the barn, boy," he said. "Charlie Carson aims to send someone from the bank to get them and the cow and I reckon anything else on the place that can be sold. You'uns gather up your clothes and whatnot. I'll just set here and rest a spell."

  I did what he said, unhitched the horses from the wagon, and put them in the stall. "Well, old boys," I said, "I guess I won't be seeing you after this." I threw in some extra hay. Next I moved to the cow and patted her rump. What would I do in town with no farm chores to tend to? Once I would have loved the idea of leaving all that work behind. Now I hated it.

  I went through the back door into the dark kitchen. My mother moved around the house, dropping things into a big basket. I watched her take the family Bible from a table in the parlor. Then I couldn't watch anymore, and I went into my room.

  It didn't take long to get my clothes, two pair of overalls, two shirts, an extra pair of summer underwear, and my winter longhandles. No use to take my beat-up winter coat. I should have thrown it in the fire last winter. It was too little and too worn out then to do me any real good. I wouldn't even be able to squeeze into it by the time cold weather came again. There wasn't much else to gather up. I got my knife, the jar of marbles I'd won after Isaac taught me to play real good, and the lucky horseshoe my grandpa had made for me with my name, Noble, forged right into it. The last thing I did was to take the keys from the very back of my shelf where I hid them.

  I held the keys in my hand and stared down at their thin black shape. I'd made one of them keys myself after a bunch of studying. The thing is, I've always been interested in metal work, made me a knife using a file on a strip of steel when I wasn't more than eight or nine.

  Hanging around the blacksmith shop in town was just about my favorite thing to do. Old Elmer Keller got so he'd let me use his hammers and tools anytime he wasn't working on a big job. Horseshoes were Elmer's main work, and since so many folks had got themselves automobiles, Elmer didn't have as much work as he used to have.

  Well, last winter, I used Elmer's shop to make one of these black keys, and I had used the keys to keep me and Ma from starving to death. Now I was looking down at them, wondering if I'd ever have the nerve to use them black keys while I was sleeping at the sheriff's house. I shook my head. No, likely I wouldn't, but I might use them to get away from the sheriff's house. I dropped the keys down in the pocket of my good black pants. If I had to use them, it wouldn't be the first time I had to steal from the telephone company.

  The first time it happened was last winter. It was late one night when I walked down the main street of Wekiwa looking for Pa because he'd been gone five days. He hadn't been drunk when he left, said he thought he could pick up a day or so of work in town, cleaning up for some storekeeper. He hadn't come home.

  Finally, I set off to look for him. I pulled at the collar of that worn-out coat, trying to get it up around my freezing ears. The sleeves was too short, and my arms turned red with cold. Supper hadn't been nothing but thin hard biscuits, made without no baking powder or soda, the same biscuits we'd been living on for almost a week.

  Usually we had stuff Ma had put away from the garden, but last summer's drought pretty much done the garden in. Ma's canned goods had only lasted through December.

  Now it was February, and I was sure hungry. I stopped in front of the town's only eating place, Daisy's Café. Pa wouldn't be inside there, but I decided to step in, just long enough to breathe some warm air. The smell of beef stew filled the place, and I could see a big bowl in front of a man at the first table. My knees went to feeling weak, and I sort of leaned against the door.

  The owner, Daisy Harrison, come toward me. "Do you want to order something?" she asked.

  I shook my head. "No money." I mouthed the words, too ashamed to say them out loud.

  "You come with me," Daisy said, and I steadied myself, then followed her through the swinging doors into the kitchen. She pointed at a small table with a chair. "Set yourself down," she said, and she dipped up a bowl of stew for me.

  I reckon no food ever tasted so good to me, but I hated to be given a handout. When I left, I muttered a quick "thanks," without even looking at Daisy Harrison.

  I got out of the door quick and moved down the street, cussing my pa. I didn't stop until I was in front of the drugstore, which was closed. Trying to figure what to do next, I leaned on the building, my shoulder against the pay phone. It wasn't long till a man I didn't know stopped his automobile and come toward me. "Would you mind moving, so's I can make a call?" the stranger asked me.

  I took a few steps, but I watched as the man dropped coins into the slot. He tried to make a call then, but he ended up pounding on the phone. "Dang thing stole my money," he yelled to nobody in particular. "Reckon it's busted."

  I never had really put no thought into how a telephone like that worked. I started to wonder where the money went. I could see the box. The money couldn't go through them little telephone lines. No, the money had to still be in that box. When the stranger put up that receiver, I went back to that telephone box, and I studied the keyholes.

  I never could have been a telephone thief if what happened next had not happened. Lo and behold, a man in a telephone truck drove up just then. I moved on down the street a little so he wouldn't notice me, but I leaned against a door watching him. He took the money out of that pay telephone. Then he took it off the wall, put it on his truck, got a new one, and put it on.

  When the man went into the Café to eat, I took the phone off his truck, and I run with it. I was scared to death, and I kept looking back over my shoulder. The phone was pretty heavy, and I knowed I couldn't run far. I headed for some trees that grow around a little creek just back of Main Street. There I dropped down on the brown grass and went to studying that phone.

  It had two locks on it, one back on the side and one in the front. The amazing thing was that in the side lock I found a key, a little strip of metal with sort of waves in it. I turned my attention to the front lock, and I got a good idea. In my pocket, I had a piece of gum. Cinda had give it to me the day before at school, and I was saving it for when hunger got too much, and I just had to have some taste besides my own spit in my mouth.

  I took out the stick of gum, just wet it a little in my mouth, and eased it into the lock. Ever so careful, I pulled the gum out of the lock, and I had a great impression of the key. I'd take that key to the blacksmith's shop in town and ask to use his tools to make me a real key.

  Then I started to worry about the phone man. When he missed the phone, what if he remembered me watching him? He could ask around town and learn my name. Besides, he might figure out what I was doing. He might even take away Wekiwa's one pay phone.

  The man might still be in the Café. I had to see if I could return that phone, minus the key. Maybe he would think the key fell out, or maybe he had even forgot that he left it in. Even though it was freezing cold, I took off my worn-out coat and wrapped it around the phone. I knowed if the phone man saw me with the bundle, he'd figure right off what it was. The coat, though, would keep other folks from knowing.

  First, I stored my gum key on a rock. Then I run back into town. When I got to the street where the truck was parked, I leaned around the corner of a building to look. The truck was still there. I didn't run, just walked along, natural, with my bundle under my arm.

  I only passed one woman on the sidewalk. She didn't pay me no mind, just hurried by with her head down. No one else seemed to be around. I moved toward the truck. I had just replaced the phone when someone yelled, "Hey!"

  I jumped. The telephone man was coming off the sidewalk toward me. "What are you doing, kid?" he demanded.

  Had he seen me with the phone? My heart was pounding, and I thought maybe my mouth was too d
ry to talk, but I got something out. "I was just looking at this here truck," I said. "Are you the fellow that gets to drive it? That sure must be a grand job." I reached out and sort of stroked the truck, amazed at what a good liar I could be.

  He laughed. "I am," he said, "but it ain't as much fun as you make it sound." He got in then and drove away, leaving me there too weak to move on.

  Five times last winter I used them keys. I figured it wouldn't be smart to take all the money. The phone company man was bound to get suspicious if there wasn't no money a'tall in the box when he come to collect. Besides, I was always hoping I wouldn't need to use the keys to keep me and Ma from starving again.

  "Where'd you get the money for all this?" Ma asked me when I brought the groceries home that first time.

  I let on like I didn't hear her, just kept setting food from the box onto the table. I had hitched the horses to the wagon, and without telling Ma where, I drove into town to buy the meat, potatoes, cans of corn, peas, carrots, and green beans. "I was thinking maybe you could make some stew," I said. "Stew tastes real good when it's cold as blazes outside."

  Ma took the package of meat and stroked the white paper covering it. Then she untied the string, took off the paper, and held the meat up in front of her to admire. "Stew sure does sound good," she said, and she moved to take down the big kettle that hung over the wood stove. But she stopped still, holding the kettle above her head. "Son, I want to know how you come up with the money for these goods!"

  I just shrugged. "What difference does it make how I done it. It's done, and I don't see as how I got to talk about it." Ma's face looked all hurt and fearful, and I softened. "Well," I said, "don't make me talk about it now, Ma. I'll tell you sometime."

  It wasn't no easy thing, facing Ma after I had stolen money, but it was even harder going to Mrs. Mitchell's place. I had to take her milk, though. I waited till after I had my stomach full of Ma's stew. The wind had died down, but it was still plenty cold. I didn't hitch up the horses, though. Somehow, I thought that it was right, me walking in the cold. I reckon I was hoping somehow that it would make me feel better, sort of like I was paying for the stealing by being cold.