The Thicket Read Free Page B

Grandpa was a large man. He may have been around seventy, but he was still commanding, with a big shock of gray hair that was once red, and it surrounded his head like a lion’s mane. He had a thick beard the color of dirty cotton, and that made him look even more like a lion, even when he was wearing a hat. He had a face that was always flushed. He looked as if he were about to boil over all the time. He called it his Irish skin. He was wide-shouldered and strong-looking, having done hard work all his life. And then there was that air about him of I-know-how-the-horse-ate-the-apple, this being due not only to his size and experience but his true and abiding belief that God was on his side and probably didn’t care as much for anyone else. This was a sentiment I figured came from having been a preacher and feeling that he had been handed special knowledge about life, and that when he got to heaven he’d be singing hymns with God personally, maybe the two of them leaning together with smiles on their faces, passing some tasteful joke between them—meaning, of course, it wouldn’t have anything to do with women or the outhouse.
    But for all his size and bluster, when Grandpa looked at the big man who had rode in on the sorrel horse, he went quiet as a mouse tiptoeing on a soft blanket. He had seen something there that didn’t set right with him, same as I had. Grandpa could be silent a lot of the time, but when he was anxious to get on his way, or was in a spin about money, he could be talkative and angry, way he had been earlier. Looking at that other fellow took it right out of him, sent him into a stone silence. I could see why. The man was big as Grandpa, easily half his age, and he had a face that looked to have been shaped with a rock and a stick wielded by an angry circus monkey. He was scarred up and his nose was bent and one of his eyes had a lid that drooped over it about halfway, so that his peeper seemed sneaky all the time. I was pretty sure that at some point someone had tried to cut his throat, cause he had a scar across it, jagged in spots. When he spoke, it sounded like he was trying to gargle with a mouthful of tacks. He was wearing an old derby hat, and though he could have done without it, it had a long white feather in it. His black suit was expensive-looking and new, but the way it fit, it was like the clothes were borrowed. To button that coat someone would have had to have let about ten pounds of air out of him and pulled it together on both sides with a team of mules.
    Grandpa made a noise in his throat, which was about as far as he went to disagreeing with the big man, rested his hand on the wagon, and looked out at the water as if expecting Jesus to come walking up on it. The air had gotten that heavy feel it gets when a storm is coming, and the sky was as dark as a drunkard’s dream. The man with the derby said to Grandpa, “You’re a man used to getting your way, aren’t you?”
    Grandpa turned and looked at him. I think at this point he wanted to let it go, but that Parker pride was there. “I am a man that thinks everyone should act promptly and get things done, even if it’s burying kin. Just today I buried my son and daughter-in-law.”
    “I suppose you believe your misery makes you special and that I should care about it,” said the man with the derby.
    “No,” said Grandpa. “I don’t. I am just stating a fact in answer to your question.”
    “I didn’t ask you if you buried anyone. I said you were a man who was used to getting his way.”
    “I guess burying them was on my mind, so I spoke of it.”
    “Why don’t you just keep your views about things to yourself?” said the big man. “Cause just this morning I was at a funeral myself. Rode up on it when it was finishing up and everyone was going off, and the grave diggers, couple of niggers, were going to cover up the hole. I pulled my gun”—here he shoved back his coat and touched the yellowed, bone-butt of a