The Sharecropper Prodigy Read Free Page A

something, and I did it. That’s all that matters and I don’t wanna talk about it.”
                  “Well, I do! That old shit-ass ain’t got no business beatin’ on y’all the way he does. He works you like dogs and then wants to beat the daylights out of you. Somebody needs to give his ass a good beatin’. We ought to gang up on him and just whup the tar out of him. I know both of us could take him. You and Sam could both take him. Why don’t y’all?”
                  “He’d just take it out on mama when we wasn’t around if we did. Besides, I got a couple of good licks in on him with an old ax handle this time. He’s got a few pump knots on the back of his old nappy head,” Ben said laughing.
                  “Good. I wish you had beat him within an inch of his sorry old life. I know he’s your daddy, but he ain’t fit to be a daddy to you or nobody else. He’s gonna wind up hurtin’ one of y’all bad one of these days, and then who’s gonna help him pick his damned cotton?”
    *****
                  Me and Ben stayed on the creek for five or six hours, not really caring whether we caught anything or not. We were mostly just trying to catch up on all the news since we hadn’t seen each other much all summer. I would make Ben talk about things he had been reading and try to teach me how to do math in my head the way he did. I could learn a lot more spending a few hours with Ben than I could in a month at school. Sometimes I wondered if he ever grew tired of my constant barrage of questions, but he seemed to enjoy them and took pleasure in telling me what he knew. There was very little quid-pro-quo, however. Most of the knowledge was transferred from Ben to me and I wasn’t able to reciprocate the favor. The only exception, was that I could tell him some news of current events I’d heard on the radio or update him on baseball scores. Even if he could have afforded it, I doubt that old Rube would have ever owned a radio. He much preferred to spend what little money and free time he had in pursuit of moonshine whiskey and women. Rachel Winston was always bringing Ben newspapers, but he usually stayed about a week behind on current events, due to the fact that she sometimes had to wait and bring a weeks worth at a time. But once Ben had them, he would read them from cover to cover, including the obituaries.
    *****
                  When we had stayed on the creek bank long enough to leave without arousing any suspicion of my having played hooky from school, we decided to walk over to my uncle Joe Burt’s store and get us a bottle of Dr. Pepper and some hoop cheese and crackers. Me and Ben both ran traps up and down  Mush Creek and always had a little pocket money from the hides we sold to Mr. Jenkins, our mail carrier.
                  There were always people hanging around the store, but for some reason it was especially crowded today. Old Jim Fuller and Mack Brown were in there usual spot, facing each other in cane back chairs with a checkerboard that was sitting on top of an old pickle barrel between them. They looked like Napoleon and Wellington facing off at the battle of Waterloo, each one rubbing their chin whiskers or foreheads in preparation of their next life or death move. There was another bunch of men gathered around the pot-belly stove, arguing volubly about something. The stove had of course sat dormant since the first of April, but they were still huddled around it like it was twenty degrees outside and the stove had a roaring fire.  
                  “Old Roosevelt’s gonna have to do something for us farmers,” Bob Samples was saying, “he got that WPA thang a-goin’ to help folks that couldn’t find no job, but he ain’t done a dad-blamed thang to help us. I reckon we’re gonna have to all go to work for the WPA or else git on some kind of government relief. The TVA ain’t a-hirin’ no