Cuyahoga Read online

  With the day’s work done, and grown folks too tired to begrudge children their mischief, all the younglegs on the west side gathered. Myself – Big – Cloe Inches – Richard Fish, son of Philo – YL Honey – Barse Fraley – Eli Frewly, even then wearing a black eye – Job Jr, aged one. We led Samantha down to the float ferry and paid our penny fares, jabbering to Alf all the way across.

  * * *

  The racers that gathered were a comedy. Most run on their own feet, but Lip Wiggins rode on a winter sled dragged by three pigs. Fat Frank Dorn raced a heifer. The cow nearly grinned somehow – I have never seen a cow so keen to run. I favored our chances, though. Even worn down by years of work, old Samantha could surely outrun any cow or pig-chariot. Big would have the reins – I would take the rear seat.

  Mr Eells drug the barrel of apples out to the lane. The first to circle the graveyard and touch the barrel would be the winner. With that he gave a whistle and the race were on. At first Samantha did not care to hurry. Spindly Bug Lewis and Philinda Crabtree – the fastest girl in Cleveland – darted to the front, with Cloe a dozen steps behind. At the first turn, Lip’s sled struck a stone and dumped him into a spacious mudhole. Before he could stand his three pigs had joined him in the mud. At the second turn, Frank’s heifer gone into the gate of the graveyard and munched at flowers. As Frank pleaded with the heifer to rejoin the race, Big finally convinced Samantha to hurry. I do not know what he whispered in her ear – that a victory would free her forever from chores – or all the apples she could eat. Whether it were truth or lies, she were convinced.

  By the third turn, Big closed with Philinda, who held a hand to a stitch in her side. Only Bug and Cloe were still ahead. I felt my heart slink down toward my guts. Samantha had worked her stubborn old bones into frenzy, and you could see molasses creeping into Bug’s twiggy legs. Cloe kept on, even with our tacalatacalatacala gaining on her.

  At the final stretch we pulled even – Cloe sailing with her skirts hitched up to her armpits – workhorse Samantha and her passengers alongside. At the very last length Big made as a circus rider and crouched on Sam’s back. Like a rastler, he leapt forward somehow… and with the very last tips of his longest fingers… touched the barrel of apples a foot ahead of Cloe.

  Brothers and sister and Sam and barrel all crashed together and rolled in the dust.

  Big and Cloe and I come up gasping, although I do not know why I were short on breath.

  * * *

  In my mind, I felt there ought to be an entire holiday to mark our victory. Congratulations from the cannon Dolores. Cider and doughnuts. A parade and hours of toasts, et c. There were no such entertainments, but pride were enough. Big turned out to be a regular duke in sharing our spoils. Apples for every boy and girl and living witness. Apples for Sam, for Frank’s heifer, for Lip’s pigs. Apples for Mr Eells’s mules, who had no part in the race. Apples for gathered idlers and whiskeyheads. Apples for the brave rivals Bug, Philinda, and Cloe, who said Let us have another derby, Big  with her cheeks full of fruit  this time on your two legs instead of Sam’s four

  Big only grinned a mouthful of apples and did not brag back.

  It were around then that Mr Eells hollered from inside his store that you had better take your prize away before the night pigs come

  * * *

  This is several times now I have spoken of the night pigs. I ought to give you an account.

  Night pigs were just what the name suggested – pigs what went by dark. Day pigs is regular enough citizens, somewhat greedy in diet, but otherwise peaceable. Look to Lip’s racers, or the late Nicholas, beloved pet of the Frewly family. Night pigs are not day pigs. Swine at liberty will turn mean faster than drunks. Your night pig is a renegado, absconded from civilization. When dark fell, regiments of these pigs come out of the woods that surrounded Ohio city and Cleveland, and ate up anything not fenced up or nailed down.

  So grown folks held a healthy respect for these night pigs, who were known to eat Bibles, bedclothes, saddles, shoes, dogs and cats, et c. Children – that is to say, us – held a wilder fear of them as the very pets of the devil. Monsters what craved to eat our personal bones. Big in particular were afraid of the night pigs. In our childhood days, he never liked to be abroad too far past dark.

  * * *

  When the sky put on its sleeping-dress of dusk, we knew to head home. Cloe gathered up Job Jr and gone home with the rest of the Ohio delegation, but Big and I lingered on at Mr Eells’s. The merchant said Big raced a horse good as any man and fed us a sip of his whiskey. That were enough to make Big forget the coming of dark for a moment. I did not care for how the whiskey scorched my guts, and chewed more fruit to forget the taste. The farther we dug into the barrel the tireder the apples got – I seen why Mr Eells had given them away. I were not bothered. The sweetness of victory shouted down rot.

  But even on our day of glory, the sun goes down. As Mr Eells closed up his shutters, Big and I considered how to haul our prize home. A mile or more from the burying ground over to the river, down the bluff, across on the float ferry – up the other bluff on the cart path – a bit farther home. I had spent our last pennies on corn cakes besides. Perhaps Alf would let us cross on credit. And the barrel – how could we carry it on Samantha’s back? What would the night pigs make of our presence?

  At that thought, I swore I heard a distant sound of hogs rooting.

  Now you are curious. You wonder why the famous Big Son would worry any at carrying one barrel of apples and rastling a few pigs.

  This is the story of how Big Son come into his prodigy, so recall that he will not have any prodigy until the end.

  * * *

  The situation knotted further – we had been too free in rewarding Samantha. Even as we stood and considered the crisis, we had kept feeding her apples from the barrel. It is a universal fact that too much reward will spoil any creature. The more we ate, the more each apple tasted of cider. Big and I was eating near as many as Samantha and had tasted Mr Eells’s whiskey besides.

  The apples was drunk with rot. Without knowing, the three of us – myself my brother and Samantha – were drunk too. Factually we were good and pissed. This condition colors the rest of the occurrences.

  Our fear of the pigs thickened. I gone from suspecting I heard them to imagining I smelled them. Big were convinced he saw one flash past us, lit up orange in the dusk. Samantha took to stomping in worry. I wondered if horses were against night pigs, too. Our task remained. The barrel were not worth the work of hauling, but we could not forsake our fruit. I went to Mr Eells’s door hoping he might let us leave the apples overnight. But the store were shut up completely, as quiet as the graveyard across the lane. I could have sworn he had been there a moment before.

  Fright grabbed at us but we did not falter – we set to using our brains.

  A scheme. One brother would ride home on Samantha, while the other stood guard over the apples. This would take many hours into night – three ferry rides in all – and the pigs would surely murder the brother who stood guard. The traveling brother would have to bother Mr Job from his Bible and catch a scolding and borrow the wagon, come back east, pick up the apples and the chewed-up carcass of the other, mourn and gobble funeral fruit all the way home.

  This would never do.

  We set and ate more apples and rubbed together what sense we still had. I always was the more intellectual, and before too long I hit on a notion so bright as we ought to hide our eyes.

  Brother  we have both got shirts and trousers

  We wore shirtclothes passed down from Mr Job and mended to keep pace with our growing – too large at the front and bottom and back and everywhere.

  What we ought to do is stuff our shirts into our trousers and cinch them good and tight – snug our sleeves at the wrist—

  My brother were looking at me admiringly. He seen my thunderbolt coming.

  —and we have only to fill up our tunics with the apples and ride home

 
* * *

  In the dark we forged our armor. Blouses filled with ten dozen rotten apples were not the Paris fashion, but they were sewn faster and without patterns. We climbed on Samantha protected by our glory. I could feel every one of those apples on my hide – slimy and cold and grand – as I settled in behind my brother.

  Big steered Sam toward the river crossing, and we was bound for safety. As we gone along we recalled the excitements of the race to each other, and reached into our shirts for refreshment. Sam could not speak but she put in her opinion anyhow, which were that she ought to have more apples. From the first steps the horse sniffed our shirts. Soon she were expressing a curiosity about their contents. Then she chanced a bite back over a shoulder. We had a laugh at her appetite – she had eaten more apples than any of us. Sam did not consider herself greedy and kept on asking. It made for slow riding.

  A second thunderbolt – we could persuade Samantha to walk straight by tossing apples ahead of us. I reached into my blouse and I chucked fruit forward over my brother’s shoulder. Sam made straight for the bait, and soon we had circumstances by the tail. At the ferry, old Alf were so amused by our condition that he did not even ask for fare.

  During our crossing Samantha’s agitation resumed and we had no means to distract her. Samantha were clever for a drunk horse. She saw that biting did not pay and turned to bucking. Without any stirrup or rein to hold, I went flying to the timber deck of the ferry with the first kick. I struck the wood with some force but owing to the one hundred apples in my shirt I had a soft landing. It did make a considerable mess in my garments.

  Before I could find my feet, Samantha had shaken Big loose. He had one foot caught in a stirrup, and his apples came tumbling out of the neck of his shirt, some splashing into the river and others rolling all over the deck timbers. Samantha snorted in joy and set to eating up the loose fruit. As she munched, my brother freed his foot and fell a short distance to the deck with a smutch.

  You might expect we grieved our loss. We only looked at each other and Alf, and back to the brother, seen the dirt and apple stuck to our faces, and laughed into pieces. We saw how we had gone just as mad as Samantha.

  Here the farce turns toward tragedy. Still shaking with laughter, we took to sport. No cannon had marked our victory so we made a salute by chucking apples. We fired them at each other as Alf cackled. Not a single apple would make it back to the homeplace. The exchange begun congenially but in the way of boys, a fool heat come into it. Before long we tried to plunk each other in the beanpot or marital parts.

  The pinch come when I fired an apple toward Big Son that went over his shoulder and flush into the rear end of our horse. Sam, gone to Jerusalem on turned fruit, did not care for that. I were set to roar laughing again. But before I could draw air, Sam kicked out a back leg with mean grace and killed my brother.

  Her hoof struck Big full on the side of the head. I saw the light in his eyes snuffed even as he fell – before I could reach him, blood seeped from his apple-clotted scalp.

  He were dead. My good and only brother were dead for the first time.

  Alf muttered Ah s___ and I yelped in fear.

  I ran to Big’s side but before I could cross the short distance, before I could reach him, before any time at all, he were back on his feet somehow – no more bothered than if he had sneezed. The wound on his scalp were gory enough but only a gash. His skull held fast. I am no doctor but this was a miracle. I had seen lesser blows kill a creature.

  * * *

  Samantha’s kick did kill Big by one thinking. It ended him as a regular person. The incident busted open some vein of lightning in his soul. Big had never been scholarly and the blow to the head did not change that any. But it put the strength and speed of fifty men into him somehow. The spirit were on him from that very moment. By six months later he were famous for his thwock.

  * * *

  You have got questions again. How did such fateful apples come to reside at Mr Eells’s grocery? Did Mr Eells know the fruit were cursed? Was Sam the borrowed horse witched at all?

  I have turned my mind a good deal on these matters. Mr Eells never showed any tendency toward the supernatural, before or after. “Samantha” is not the name of any sorcerer in the Bible or in stories. If Big’s coming into spirit were a regular haint story, Mr Dennes would have been a stranger only passing through, such as we never seen before, and would have insisted that the orphan boys borrow his magic horse, and so on. But Mr Dennes were folks. We known him and Sam, before and after. I did keep an eye on Sam to see if she busted up anyone else. If it happened I never seen or heard. Some years later she keeled over dead as a final protest against work, and Mr Dennes had us drag her to the road. She never come back as a ghost. No, I do not consider that Sam were the trouble.

  Whatever spirit touched Big were traveling in the apples, but its rupture took the mixing together of apples with the greed and glory of that night. The apples were not treated carefully, like you ought to treat a fickle substance. Gunmeal, kreosote, et c. I expect you wanted some more fanciful tale for how my brother come to his prodigy, but it were only a knock on the head. Let his accident be a lesson. We cannot live without gobbling up the world – taking its trouble into our bones and flesh – a kick will bust the trouble loose.

  A confession. I am a maker of coffins but I have questions about the sense in burying.

  Of course we must wait somewhere for Christ’s trumpet et c. But lying in the dirt for centuries on end, all your flesh gone to feed worms, seems foolish. If Christ will raise us up in the end anyhow, what does it matter that we are buried with any particular manners? Will all our bits be mended on the great day? Will I have a new suit of clothes? Will the worms have eaten up my brain? Will they think my thoughts?

  I do not say I have any better idea what to do with dead folks. Only that I hate to see such careful work hidden away.

  * * *

  At day time, the Ohio city graveyard at Monroe-street behaved mostly like you expect from a burying place – peaceful and lonely. But come dark, Monroe-street became the grand promenade of the night pigs. Now, a pig will go where it likes, and day pigs had liberty to wander. But after some discussion it was decided that we ought not to have pigs participating in mourning. That it were unsanitary and not entirely Christian to have swine rooting among the graves. So a subscription were taken up for a fence, and a sign posted declaring

  FIVE DOLLARS SHERIFF’S FINE FOR ANY PIG

  TO WONDER IN THESE PREMISES

  I believe the sign maker meant WANDER and only spelled badly. But the mistake had a poem to it. Of course the spelling on the sign did not mean much to pigs, any more than the rest of the words or laws or five dollars. In a matter of days, the pigs had made a hole in the fence and gone back to their patch. No one bothered to rebuke them. There is not much use for a graveyard at night besides. The pigs had decency enough to leave the dead folks be.

  * * *

  The Sunday after Big’s bridge fell, I found myself at Monroe-street without meaning to. Our mother and father were here somewhere under plain markers. In truth there were not much to remember them by, besides Big and I. We was their burying stones.

  In boastful moments, Big would sometimes say his father was a wildcat and his mother was a winter blizzard.

  He never said our father our mother  Only my father my mother

  I did not know if he set me aside as a courtesy or a cutting out.

  * * *

  Dusk were coming on at Monroe-street and I did not care to meet the night pigs. And there was a night-fry scheduled – yet another congress of Ohio citizens at Dog’s grocery to address the bridge question. It is when folks haven’t got a good answer to a question that they ask it most.

  As I walked to Dog’s, the sounds of evening come in. Four-legged dogs shouting their news. Crickets at their restless prayers. Night were full with mischief, not confined to pigs and dogs and bugs. Upstanding folks bent a ways at night – romanced untowardly, raided
gardens, swiped every type of creature, robbed themselves of virtue.

  Not that we was all angels in white during the day. And night did have a peace – its sins tended toward quiet. As I come up to the bluff and saw the sun easing into bed out over the western water, I asked how long anger could reign over such healthy air. Even Dog’s grocery looked handsome, with lamplight spilling soft from its little windows.

  * * *

  I found Dog at work that would be morbid in anyone else – writing his epitaph. The congress had not yet sat. Folks was trickling in and washing up their minds with drink before serious talk. Dog were seated at the back underneath his museum of violence, scratching away with a coal like he meant to ignite his scrap of paper.

  In his person Dog resembled a grave somewhat – narrow at the shoulders – stooped some – worn by years. This were not his only commonplace with burying stones. Dog were always sharpening a matter down to a point, like as a marker tells the life underneath in a word or two—

  MOTHER

  FATHER

  BELOVED CHILD

  A gravestone never told how a body truly was. You never met a grave what said—

  A DRUNKARD BUT KINDHEARTED AND STEADY WORKING

  CLEVER AND CAPABLE BUT NEVER COME TO MUCH GOOD

  WORRIED ON SIN SUCH THAT HE GOT IT IN HIS BLOOD

  Dog were deep down in his sentiments. Like he believed himself pledged to a duel at dawn. He had even shaved – soap still on his cheeks – and greased his hair. You might have thought he were going courting. His sweetheart were not any woman but the fussing over the bridge.

  I sat down with him and he showed me with a dash of pride the various slogans he had ginned up.