Homeland and Other Stories Read Free Page B

into the cab.
    When he came around to the other side I asked him, “Are you sure Great Mam wants to go?”
    â€œSure she does,” he said. “She wants to see the place where she grew up. Like what Morning Glory is to you.”
    â€œWhen I grow up I’m not never coming back to Morning Glory,” Jack said.
    â€œMe neither.” Nathan spat over the side of the truck, the way he’d seen men do.
    â€œDon’t spit, Nathan,” Papa said.
    â€œShut up,” Nathan said, after Papa had gotten in the truck and shut the door.
    The houses we passed had peeled paint and slumped porches like our own, and they all wore coats of morning-glory vines, deliciously textured and fat as fur coats. We pointed out to each other the company men’s houses, which had bright white paint and were known to have indoor bathrooms. The deep ditches along the road, filled with blackberry brambles and early goldenrod, ran past us like rivers. On our walks to school we put these ditches to daily use practicing Duck and Cover, which was what our teachers felt we ought to do when the Communists dropped the H-bomb.
    â€œWe’ll see Indians in Tennessee,” Jack said. I knew we would. Great Mam had told me how it was.
    â€œGreat Mam don’t look like an Indian,” Nathan said.
    â€œShut up, Nathan,” Jack said. “How do you know what an Indian looks like? You ever seen one?”
    â€œShe does so look like an Indian,” I informed my brothers. “She is one.”
    According to Papa we all looked like little Indians, I especially. Mother hounded me continually to stay out of the sun, but by each summer’s end I was so dark-skinned my schoolmates teased me, saying I ought to be sent over to the Negro school.
    â€œAre we going to be Indians when we grow up?” Nathan asked.
    â€œNo, stupid,” said Jack. “We’ll just be the same as we are now.”
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    We soon ran out of anything productive to do. We played White Horse Zit many times over, until Nathan won, and we tried to play Alphabet but there weren’t enough signs. The only public evidence of literacy in that part of the country was the Beech Nut Tobacco signs on barn roofs, and every so often, nailed to a tree trunk, a clapboard on which someone had painted “ PREPARE TO MEET GOD .”
    Papa’s old truck didn’t go as fast as other cars. Jack and Nathan slapped the fenders like jockeys as we were passed on the uphill slopes, but their coaxing amounted to nought. By the time we went over Jellico Mountain, it was dark.
    An enormous amount of sky glittered down at us on the mountain pass, and even though it was June we were cold. Nathan had taken the quilt for himself and gone to sleep. Jack said he ought to punch him one to teach him to be nice, but truthfully, nothing in this world could have taught Nathan to share. Jack and I huddled together under the tarp, which stank of coal oil, and sat against the back of the cab where the engine rendered up through the truck’s metal body a faint warmth.
    â€œJack?” I said.
    â€œWhat.”
    â€œDo you reckon Great Mam’s asleep?”
    He turned around and cupped his hands to see into the cab. “Nope,” he said. “She’s sitting up there in between ’em, stiff as a broom handle.”
    â€œI’m worried about her,” I said.
    â€œWhy? If we were home she’d be sitting up just the same, only out front on the porch.”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œGlorie, you know what?” he asked me.
    â€œWhat?”
    A trailer truck loomed up behind us, decked with rows of red and amber lights like a Christmas tree. We could see the driver inside the cab. A faint blue light on his face made him seem ghostly and entirely alone. He passed us by, staring ahead, as though only he were real on this cold night and we were among all the many things that were not. I shivered, and felt an identical chill run